


An Idiot's Guide to the Underworld

by OxfordOctopus



Category: Hades (Video Game 2018), Parahumans Series - Wildbow
Genre: (She Gets Better), Canon-Typical Violence, Gen, Other Additional Tags to Be Added, Post-Gold Morning (Parahumans), Post-Golden Morning (Parahumans), Taylor dies, Underworld
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-11-07
Updated: 2020-11-16
Packaged: 2021-03-09 03:35:31
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 22,208
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27438184
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/OxfordOctopus/pseuds/OxfordOctopus
Summary: Taylor dies as a mortal and wakes as a goddess.It's complicated.
Comments: 40
Kudos: 262





	1. Homestead 1.1

Red.

That was all she could see. An endless red that surrounded her, entombed her. She could feel herself float in it, feel the way it stung her eyes when she tried to open them, the way it tasted faintly of copper on the back of her tongue.

There was no single moment where she fully came back to herself. It wasn’t one moment she wasn’t, the next she was, but rather a growing sort of awareness, drip-fed like an IV, gradually settling into her skull. For a time, being in the red, endless and metallic, was not something she sought to fight against. Something in her head whispered that this was the place to be, that this was normal, that the slow ripple of bubbles around her mouth, around her hair was just as simple as the fog that might follow a warm breath in winter.

Then, just as slowly as the awareness, the memories came back. A vast fight, a man made of gold, the stars, so far away, so infinitely larger than herself. The painful sound of a gunshot from up-close, then the violent pain of a bullet splitting her skull.

Panic surged, Taylor swiped a hand furtively through the red, sluggish and resistant from the fluid. It was heavy, slick, sticky and viscous like honey. She surged forward, tried to scramble her body, the panic of her mind refusing to acknowledge the lack of burn in her lungs that doubtlessly should’ve come after such a long time beneath it. Nothing made sense, nothing needed to, all she could do was flail, kicking her legs out, trying to recall the half-absent memories of swimming at summer camp, trying to propel herself forward and up, towards air or anything solid.

Her hands met something hard, knuckles smarting harshly against it. She barely registered the pain, reaching back out again as fingers caught against the telltale feel of stone, rough and pockmarked from age and erosion. Her fingers bit into it, and she pulled up, crawling desperately towards the ever-brightening red above her—the surface, it must be. She pulled and scrambled and reached out and out and out and—

The red broke around her head, and Taylor took in a wheezing gasp of air that she didn’t need, but felt obligated to do.

Black spots freckled the edges of her vision, fading slowly as her surroundings slowly came into contrast. Above her was a ceiling sculpted into stone, smooth and onyx-black, like obsidian. Her fingers, where before she had assumed the rough edge of a shore cliff, were instead a series of small steps leading up and out of the pond she was floating in. The walls were decorated with marble and gold, with pillars emerging at various points along its length, some encrusted by messy chunks of stone and gem, but did not reach all the way up to the roof, which towered so high above it was almost hard to see. To her left, a sculpted vase about the size of a small car drooled an endless river of red into the pool below, perpetually filling it.

Where—where _was_ she? It took a moment for her memories to reorient themselves, but each time she tried to grab for the answer, all that came back was _blank_. She remembered the fight, Scion, everything that preceded it. She remembered wandering into the grassy knoll, meeting Contessa. She remembered their talk, fading and wistful, the longing she’d stared up at the stars with.

She remembered dying.

Shutting her eyes, Taylor worked to banish the memory— _a spike of pain, nothingness, a spike of pain, nothingness, a spike of pain_ —and worked on a more feasible task for the time being. She grappled with the slippery, smooth surface of the stairs, dragging herself forward until her bare foot could make contact with the rocky incline, hauling herself up and out of the pool, onto the stairs.

She came, almost immediately, face-to-back with what looked like a spectre. The noise that burst out of her - somewhere between a shriek and a yell of confusion - caused the thing to startle, whipping around to not so much stare at her, as she couldn’t see any eyes beneath the hood it wore, shadowed as it was. She scrambled back, away from the pool and spectre both, her heel skidding against the ground as she jerked into the nearest pillar, her head smacking painfully back against it.

The spectre—it was only abstractly human, vaguely reminiscent of something Glastig might tote around alongside her. It was slightly see-through, green-blue in colour, and mostly featureless outside of encompassing the general shape of what a person might look like, had they been hunching over and wearing a heavy cloak. The other spectres - and there were _more_ , all identical, dozens of them in a procession which had been, until her outburst, seemingly drifting down the hallway - had turned to look as well, all turned in her direction, some more hunched than others.

Taylor swallowed, tried again to get her bearings. Her mind kept returning to _dying_ , to getting shot, a heady sort of memory, the type of thing that’d stay with her well into the future. She scrambled for a moment, trying to drum up protocols she’d learned for handling projections, Master minions that came not from control but from projection. Policies for those like the Siberian, Genesis, and nothing, not even a little, came.

She tried to reach out, tried to project some of what she was feeling into her bugs, into _something_ , and realized, somewhat belatedly, that there weren’t any. Not a single bug, not any she could perceive, in any event. It hit her in the chest, nearly knocked the breath out of her even as the procession of spectres slowly turned back around and began to drift back down the hallway, looking unruffled despite her freak-out.

She had no powers. She had died, she—

“Oh, Styx!” A voice called out, sounding panicked.

Taylor whipped her head around just in time to see the source of it. It was... well, a person. He was dressed in thick red wear, an outer, fur-lined cloak pulled around his shoulders that resembled a comforter more than it did a travel cloak. He was adorned in gold, with flared, wing-like spaulders and some sort of choker or collar around his throat that flared out where it met his nape. The clothes he wore beneath the cloak were similarly red, but fitted like something out of ancient Greece, a toga or something like it.

None of that was the most striking thing about him, however. That would go to his blue-tinted skin. It was the sort of blue that came when rigour mortis settled in in colder climates, when the red hues of the body were leached out, to be replaced by bruise-like purples and blues. His hair was pure white, and curly in a way that transcended even her own, so dense and thick that it bore a closer resemblance to a small cloud on his head, the fringe kept out of his eyes by what looked at a distance like a sleep mask.

Even odder was that he wasn’t running, but rather more hovering in her direction, his bare feet a few inches off the ground. His face was twisted up into something that looked like genuine horror or panic, and he was clutching a small clipboard-like object - with paper spread out over it - against his chest.

“You—you, uh, _really_ shouldn’t’ve come out of there!” The man yelled, voice reedy and high, almost cartoonishly pitched, despite the very real worry painted in his voice. “Or look like that, for that matter! And your name! The papers can’t tell! Oh _shadows_ , Lord Hades is going to be so—so—!”

Whatever he was about to say ended in a noise of pain, like he couldn’t quite bring himself to vocalize whatever punishment “Hades” might have for him. Taylor tucked the name away—a cape name, she was assuming. The spectres could be his, the pool could be, well, tinkertech. She died, right? It wasn’t out of the realm of imagination to bring her back to life, though it didn’t sound intentional. It wasn’t like Bonesaw hadn’t done the same with fewer tools.

She... she didn’t actually want to know how it took place, still couldn’t quite get the feeling of death, eddying at the edge of her awareness, to leave.

“You, you _really_ have to come with me!” The man continued to say, growing rapidly closer.

Taylor pressed her palm into the pillar behind her, levering herself up to her feet. Her eyes drifted down, caught sight of her own dress; a pure-white dress of some kind, looped over and around her again in a way that inspired images of Greco-Roman clothing. It wasn’t stained by the red pool she’d just emerged out of, and at a closer inspection none of her was even _wet_ anymore. She had both arms back, as well, though the feelings about that were being left firmly tucked away until she could get out of here.

 _Process later,_ she reminded herself. _Deal with things now_.

“Who are you?” She said, instead, levelling a glare in the floating cape’s direction. “Where is this? Who is your leader?” She might be bluffing, might not have a single bug to her name, but if anyone thought she’d just flop over and let _whatever_ this was happen to her? She wasn’t about to have it.

To her credit, whatever she must’ve projected stalled the floating cape, causing him to jerk to a stop not too far away from her. The shades - _projections_ \- had turned to watch them again, eerily silent despite the generally unintimidating look of them.

“I uh, wow you are... as messed up as your death entry!” The cape announced brightly, panic subsiding for something like curiosity. “I’m Hypnos, of course! This is the Underworld, next, and third, Lord Hades is, of course! It’s silly that you don’t know that, you know?”

 _Hades_ , Hypnos—actual Greek gods? She’d heard _of_ capes taking up the names of gods as names, but they rarely stuck on anyone but the most terrifying out of them. It took a lot to be able to own the name of a god, reputation wise, even the more minor ones. She wasn’t sure exactly what _flying_ had to do with Hypnos, which she was relatively sure equally had something to do with dreams, but then grab-bags were always a thing.

Still, _the Underworld?_ A base, maybe? Or—or possibly some sort of cape group? She tried to recall anything like it, but all she could pull was blanks.

“And what do you prefer?” Hypnos continued, interrupting her thoughts, slowly floating forwards. He had at some point tugged the clipboard away from his chest and was now staring determinedly down at it. “Taylor Hebert, Weaver, Skitter or— _ooh_ , Khepri? I like that last one.”

What. It—no, calm down. She was fine. If someone had revived her they could’ve easily figured out her secret identity, not that it had been much of one, considering the press coverage around the incident at Arcadia. Admittedly, by virtue of her being a minor, they had been able to scrub it from most parts of the internet and cable news, but she knew it was still out there, traded among the list of known capes by people with too much time on their hands and an utter lack of respect for people’s privacy. They couldn’t get rid of all of it, not really.

But, _Khepri_? That was new. She couldn’t remember anything about having that as a name.

“But, no, sincerely, you uh...” Hypnos trailed off, twisting his head back around to stare at the procession of spectres. “You really need to come with me. This is really not how things are supposed to be working right now, and, well, there’s only one way forward.”

Flicking her eyes around and sincerely missing her bugs for not the first time, Taylor took in her surroundings and had to concede that he was mostly right. She was at the end of a long hallway, polished marble and gold, much like everything else, with the only way forward being away from the pool and towards... towards...

Taylor blinked. She hadn’t really bothered to look down the full length of the hallway, too caught up with the threats nearest to her. First the spectres, then Hypnos, but now looking at it, the hallway opened up at the end into a larger room, dominated by a single desk, behind which was a very, very large man. He was hunched over, resting in a throne-like seat, working over an endless pile of papers. She couldn’t get a good look at him from here, but he was easily two times her height, and dressed in regal reds, with spaulders made to resemble skeletal heads.

Next to him, of all things, was a dog about the size of one of Rachel’s, albeit one with three heads and fur the colour of blood. All three were laying down, half-stacked on one-another, with eyes shut. Behind both the dog and the giant was a mural made from stained glass, depicting a man holding a skull above his head, or perhaps it was his head, it was too far away to tell.

“Lord Hades is an imposing man,” Hypnos said simply, jolting Taylor back into the present, her head whipping around to stare at him. He smiled thinly at her, reaching up with his free hand to rub tiredly at one of his eyes. “Gotta face the music before I can take a nap, so...”

He motioned vaguely towards the hallway.

Taylor breathed in, let it out. Steeled herself. If that was Hades, then he ran this place, and would have answers. She had no tools, no powers, but she had dealt with much less in situations arguably much worse. This could all be a ploy, and that idea still swam around in her head, too much she didn’t know. Could Hypnos’ behaviour be all a ploy? Possible. Could all of this be tinkertech? Almost certainly. Could this be a Myrddin situation, where it wasn’t entirely clear if they truly believed they were magical or if it was all a clever marketing ploy? Also possible.

Taking a step forward, Taylor began to pace down the hallway, Hypno keeping just ahead of her. She could do this, she could face this down, she could handle this. She let herself sink back into that eminent headspace that always worked when it came to confrontations. It wasn’t so easy without her bugs, without the endless distractions they provided, but she managed well enough.

“So, what’re you choosing for a name?” Hypnos asked, tilting his head back around as he gracefully floated on ahead, a lazy smile twitching at her otherwise tense expression.

It wasn’t like they didn’t already know it. “Taylor,” she replied quietly, preferring it. “Just call me Taylor.”

“Ookay, wouldn’t be _my_ choice, but Taylor it is! Says here you...” He squinted. “Received some pretty bad head trauma! Sucks like that, I’m surprised you could die at all though! Things don’t generally happen that way. Really, your entire death profile is worryingly messy. Multiple names, constantly shifting natures, the fact that you died. All very odd.”

Taylor turned, glanced warily towards him. “Why wouldn’t I die?”

Hypno just blinked, a sluggish sort of thing that imparted a fair amount of bewilderment. He laughed, awkwardly, before apparently catching sight of her expression and realizing she was serious. “Oh, uhm. Well, y’know, the only thing consistent here says you’re a goddess. I mean, I can even feel it!”

That was a point in favour of the Myrddin prognosis. It wouldn’t be the first time someone conflated having powers with being divine-touched or something similar. A lot of early religious cults had risen up around the earliest parahumans, back before it became centralized and the mystique of being able to shoot lasers had been worn down by a government-sponsored information campaign.

The fact that he could ‘feel’ her powers - even if she couldn’t herself - did point towards something. Possibly a Trump? It might fit, but it wasn’t good to focus overly much on speculation. After all, while Skitter did point towards bug control, it could’ve also been picked up by a person with super speed, or anything else. Names were relative, and sometimes intentionally misleading.

Still, she opened her mouth to probe a bit more about that.

“Back already, _boy_?” A voice thundered, blocking the words before they could come. Taylor swung her head around, catching sight of the huge man again, her feet brushing against the threshold that divided the hallway from the main foyer. The dog to his right had perked up by her proximity, all three heads tilted curiously. It would almost be cute, if not for the gleaming fangs and uncanny sense of intelligence packed away in each pair of eyes.

That and the three heads, really.

“Well, uhm, about that. Sir?” Hypno called out, fidgeting with his clipboard.

Hades - presumably - stilled, eyes still trained on his paperwork. Slowly, almost achingly, he rotated his head up from his desk, eyes drawing a line straight to Hypno, then to her, then to the pool behind her and the smattering of spectres surrounding her.

“You... the pool?” He asked, eyes flicking away from her, towards Hypnos. “Give me the list.” It came harsh, a demand.

Hypnos, visibly scared, nodded wildly before fluttering over, placing the clipboard up onto Hades’ gigantic, black-stone desk. The man swiped it up with one meaty hand, easily large enough to cover the entire thing, his face pursing as he glanced down at the piece of parchment attached to it.

After a moment, Hypnos pulled back away, coming to float just a little ways beside her.

“Nyx!” Hades bellowed, glancing away. “I need your assistance in these matters!”

There was a flurry of black motes, coalescing into place just next to the desk. A woman solidified out of them, hair as black as night, with skin so pale it was closer to Alabaster’s than anything remotely human. She was older-looking, closer to her mid-to-late 40s, and dressed in gold and purple rather than the regality of red and gold that Hades and Hypnos wore. She had a purple amethyst stuck to her forehead, and her clothes were, again, toga-like, made from purple silken fabric, with epaulets on either shoulder meant to resemble crescent moons. She wore enough gold jewelry that Taylor discarded the notion of cataloguing all of it, from rings on her fingers to gloves on her hands to wrist-bands and necklaces but what did stand out, above all else, was a hair ornament, inlaid with designs to resemble a skeleton and other lunar iconography, that she used to fit the majority of her undoubtedly exceedingly long hair into a fanciful style, flaring out around her head as it was, looking almost like wings spread.

“Lord Hades, while we—” Whatever she was about to say died off, her eyes slipping from the man himself towards Taylor, focusing down on her with enough intensity that Taylor found herself taking a step back. “This is...”

“Unprecedented,” Hades finished matter-of-factly for her, reaching out to hand the clipboard off to the woman, who took it gently, eyes flitting over whatever was inscribed on the paper.

“A godlet. Born from the Styx, you think?” Nyx asked, not glancing up.

Hades shook his head. “I would know if Styx was with child. Notice the names, Nyx, they change.”

“I’m not a _god_ ,” Taylor couldn’t quite help it anymore, spitting the word out. “I—gods aren’t real. Powers aren’t divine.” She hated the notion, it’d always gotten under her skin in a way. A low ache of _wrongness_ , that something _divine_ could come out of trauma or, later on, be bottled and given out to those who paid enough.

Heads swivelled to turn at her. From Nyx’s look of slight confusion, to Hypnos’ worried look, to something like hatred smouldering in the gimlet eyes of Hades. There was only silence following her proclamation, her words echoing dimly off the halls, even the low burble of that red fountain fading away into the absolute silence.

“She suffered a head wound, it says,” Nyx picked up, glancing at Hades. “Generally we do not die, not truly. Mortality is unbecoming, and not something even your son truly holds claim to.”

“She is certainly not mortal now, I can already feel it,” Hades continued, eyes flicking away towards Nyx. “A newborn, is our best guess?”

“A confused one,” Nyx agreed idly.

Taylor felt her frustrations spike, swirl unpleasantly in her gut. Her fingers tensed, clenched down into fists at her sides. They were just _ignoring_ her, dismissing her. She wasn’t a god, _they weren’t gods_ —powers did not make people divine. They only dragged them down, their sole purpose had been to end the world. There was nothing holy about that. “My powers,” Taylor grit out, each word hard in her throat. “Are not _divine_. I am not a _god!_ ”

Hades stared back at her, utterly unruffled by her outburst. “Whether or not they were then,” Hades began, his words icy and cold. “It does not matter. The world only acknowledges _power_ , godling, and whatever it might have been is no longer. You are in the Underworld, _my domain_ , and your power is now yours. It infuses you, it has _become_ you. You may not know it yet, but you are divine, undecided yet, but you will eventually come into your own. Despite my own declaration not to trifle in the matters of other gods, newborn or ancient, you have come into _my_ house, and you are now _my_ problem.”

“Stop trying to fool me!” Taylor snapped back, motioning behind her. “This is all—this isn’t _real!_ You know my identity, you clearly brought my corpse back to life somehow. I have my memories, I won’t be fooled by this! It’s obviously Tinkertech, nothing you can say will—”

The world _shook_. Light, which has previously trickled in from behind the stained-glass mural from sources unknown, dimmed and guttered entirely. Braziers, situated around the area to give light, flickered and grew faint, and the same happened to the candles. The spectres, previously content to mill awkwardly around, warbled and shrieked in voices that sounded distant and echoed, scattering away into corners or around walls to hide. The three-headed dog slowly rose, eyes staring focusedly at her, each maw drooling, too intent to be anything but predatory.

Everything rumbled, accompanied by the harsh groan of stone-against-stone. The world grew darker, Taylor could feel herself almost sink down, the pressure of _whatever this was_ weighing heavily against her back. Her breath came out hard, panting, nearly a wheeze as she felt her legs buckle, trembling beneath an unseen, almost unfelt weight. She could hear Hypnos next to her saying something, but it sounded like it was underwater, too muffled to make out. Her vision swam, red tinting everything, encroaching in like it might swallow her again, drag her back down. Be done with it.

“Enough, Lord Hades,” Nyx’s voice cut through the din, the groaning, sounding crystal clear in her ears. “She is clearly beyond her wits, give her a stay of execution so that she may regain them.”

In an instant, the pressure was gone.

Taylor toppled, knees hitting the ground, hands barely managing to flash out in time to catch herself before she’d faceplant into the ground. Sweat dripped across the skin of her face, pooled against her nose, and fell off, hitting the ground beneath her. She breathed in, savouring the sweet feeling of oxygen in her lungs, trying to regain some semblance of control.

“I will not accept _disrespect_ in this house,” Hades said, voice flinty but utterly calm. “Whether or not you feel as though this is all some infernal trap to twist you, to bewilder you, _you_ , once-mortal, of little import in the grand scheme of things, _does not matter_. You are here now, you are part of _my_ household, and you will abide by the rules of propriety in doing so.”

Taylor didn’t look up, couldn’t, not when the feeling of death still swirled unpleasantly in the pit of her skull.

There was the sound of creaking stone again. “Nyx, as you have decided to defend her against due punishment, you may look after her until such a time when chambers can be prepared. Know it that this may make up for some of your... _latest_ interpretations of our oath.”

“Of course,” Nyx replied, sounding closer than she had been before. Her voice was almost icy, hard and clipped, but utterly professional.

“Hypnos, go to the administrative room and find _answers_ ,” Hades announced next. “Take the death log with you, do not dawdle.”

“Uh, ah, yessir! Sorry, uh, Lord Hades. Sir.”

“And, finally,” Hades began again, and Taylor could feel his gaze on her, a painful heat against her spine. “If you wish to verify if you are truly in the afterlife, if you still do not truly believe your fate, then, next time my erstwhile, foolish child comes around, you may feel free to accompany him on one of his escape attempts without me taking offence to it. When you die, and when you return...”

There was a pause, the weight of his gaze growing heavier.

“You will know that this is the truth. Now, get out of my sight.”

The gaze left, and with it the weight. A hand touched her shoulder, gentle but so very cold, like the flesh was not just dead, but nearly frozen solid. Taylor canted her head up, caught sight of Nyx hunching over, hand on her shoulder.

“Come,” she said, slipping one hand further beneath her armpit, helping her to her feet despite the wobbliness of her knees. Taylor sucked in breaths, tried to center herself but the low rattling of stones in the back of her head disrupted all attempts. She felt worse than unmoored, worse than out of place, she felt _fragile_ , like a stiff breeze might shatter her to pieces. “I will show you to the lounge, where we may talk.”

Shakily, she glanced Hades’ way, caught sight of him working once again, unruffled and uncaring, not even looking at her. His quill scratched across the parchment, the only noise in the air. The spectres, previously having fled, slowly began to drift back in, one-by-one, some passing through walls while others took more conventional routes.

Nyx’s hand, ice-cold, closed around her wrist gently and tugged, pulling her towards the rightmost hallway. Taylor followed, still in a daze, still reeling in every which way. Her feet made solid noises as they hit the ground, the only thing that felt even remotely real, as even Nyx, despite appearing as though she was walking, made not a sound.

A smaller group of spectres huddled around a desk, piled high with notes and blueprints, each one wearing what looked to be a rudimentary approximation of a hardhat. A little ways to the side and in front of it was an empty seat, a lyre left abandoned at its side. Passing beyond that, Nyx led her up to a set of doors easily the height of a single-story house, with one of the doors already pushed open. Inside, the low sound of chatter rattled out to the accompanying noise of clattering plates, and there were a series of three tables in a line visible even from the threshold.

Spectres were here too, of a variety of shapes. To her immediate right, one was fitted behind an L-shaped desk, adorned with gothic-styled metal fencing, and was about the size of an elephant, and much more round than its contemporaries. Curious yellow dots - eyes, she was assuming - stared out from beneath the cloak, the rest of its face cast in impenetrable shadow. Further inside, a lankier-looking shade hovered next to what was clearly a cooking area, encircled by a lower bar-like barrier, fitted with plenty of plates and stools placed in front of them. What other spectres were there looked like the rest, and were mostly clustered up against a single table off in one corner, heads bowed and silent.

Nyx let go of her wrist, pacing forward up to the middle table. Gesturing towards one of the two stools, she took a seat in the other, breathing out a quiet sigh as she did.

Warily, slowly returning to her wits, the sound of creaking stone and untombed things slowly fading, Taylor took a seat across from her.

“You still don’t believe any of this is real,” Nyx said, rather flatly.

Taylor glanced down at her hands, to the things around her, the endless array of spectres, her experiences not a minute ago. “No.”

There was another sigh. “That will change. Life was not kind to you, child, I can see it in you.” Another pause. “Death can be, however. You will have to learn the way of things here, as you are to remain. I do not know yet what your place among us will be, but neither do I think you will avoid having such a place. I would introduce you to my child, Thanatos, had I the opportunity, but he is... busy.”

Taylor found herself glancing up, fixing her hands against the table, clenching it if only to have a place to put her anger, her frustration. Her fear. “I don’t know what you’re trying to accomplish,” she said, finally, getting the words out felt hard, like she was about to be buried in red again. “I—is this a cult?” She didn’t want it to sound plaintive, fearful, but she might not have a choice. “What do you want from me? I found...”

Closure. Acceptance. An end to the path, one with regrets, yes, but she had finally been... done. Finished. She had saved the world, destroying herself in the process, but she had done _enough_. She had been so tired at the end, so weary, years of preparation, years of work, it had worn her down. She had been ready to die, ready to move on.

“Child,” Nyx said slowly, almost gently. “Things are not always fair. I still do not know how you arrived here, your power _is_ foreign, though with each passing moment it grows more familiar, more in-tune with the world. Whatever it once was—it is no longer, and in this place...” She trailed off, glancing away.

“Power is everything, and you have power. Enough to qualify, enough to be divine. This is the Underworld, godlet.” Nyx stared at her, dead in the eyes, with conviction so strong it must have come from either truth or severe indoctrination. Taylor wasn’t entirely sure which one would be worse. “And you are stuck here, now and forever. Welcome to the House of Hades.”


	2. HOMESTEAD 1.2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Taylor acclimates.

As the minutes passed, the world began to more firmly reassert itself. The sound of scraping stone, the low groan of the earth—they faded into the back of her head, distancing themselves from the present until she could hardly remember what it had felt like. The pressure and heaviness lifted slowly from her body, her nerves tingling in a decidedly unfamiliar way. It all felt hypersensitive to even the air, like it was charged with static.

Centring herself without bugs was more difficult than it should’ve been. She hadn’t had even a remotely good poker face before getting her powers, certainly, but she had assumed the skills she’d obtained since then in keeping her calm would at least somewhat translate. Her better hopes had been wrong, to that end, as it was taking a startling amount of her focus to keep her expression placid, Nyx’s unfaltering gaze a constant reminder of her current situation.

She was not with friends, not even remotely. This was a hostile environment—Nyx was, whether brainwashed into a cult or not, an accessory to her abduction. She wasn’t an ally.

The deafening silence from her power was worrying her the most, out of everything. Before, she’d dealt with power nullifiers - Hatchet Face, to a lesser extent Echidna - and even with her power out of her control when under the influence of their abilities, she had still _felt_ it. A staticky hum, sitting beneath the surface of her skin, prevented from fully escaping. Even in the few times she’d been as removed from bugs as possible - as, despite the genuine efforts of most people, bugs could and would get everywhere without you even noticing - like on flights, her power had still been _there_ , reaching out, trying to connect. She could always feel it, always recall its presence.

It wasn’t there anymore. She couldn’t feel any trace of it.

Removing someone’s power was not an easy affair. There were a few in record who could, the most known among them being Glaistig Uaine, and the general theme throughout was that people tended to die with permanent power removal. Instantaneously, in some cases, slowly and painfully in others, but death was a frequent affair. There’d always been rumours and hearsay about Cauldron possibly being able to remove powers after the fact, but to a point Taylor had never really found out whether or not that had just been a euphemism for killing someone.

She didn’t feel any different, to be fair. They had healed her arm, and last she checked she used to be close to blind without contact lenses or her glasses on, despite currently having neither and being able to see perfectly fine. If anything, she felt better than she had in the days leading up to the Slaughterhouse’s return, where it had felt like an uphill fight against exhaustion and aches. In theory, this meant nothing; she could be wasting away over a longer period of time, and the symptoms of such a thing just hadn’t set in yet, but that wasn’t a particularly useful way of thinking.

She was just going to assume she wasn’t going to have her powers now or into the immediate future, and hope that it was temporary, or at least not permanent.

“Dusa,” Nyx called out, eyes finally drifting from her face. Her mask nearly slipped in relief.

There was a _thud_ , flesh impacting something solid and dense like stone. A small green blur flickered across the edges of her vision, Taylor casting her head skyward, towards where a series of rafters had been attached to the sloping stone ceiling. Descending down from it was, rather bluntly, a head. Green, scaled skin, significantly lighter around the face, encompassed a single floating head, with hair made up of about five snakes. Her eyes were larger than they should be, like how they got on young geckos, and filled in with yellow for all but a single slice of pupil, like a cat’s or a reptile’s. She had a snake-like nose, too, more of a pair of holes set at about where the nostrils should be. Her mouth was wide, with a pair of fangs that tended to worry at her thin lower lip. She wore a headband of a sort, a slip of white cloth with a red disc attached to it, inscribed with a sigil that appeared frequently throughout the environment—likely Hades’ symbol itself, considering the fact that it resembled the odd way he styled his beard.

Blankly, Taylor watched a gorgon’s literal detached head descend further, accompanied by a low, putter-like sound whenever it moved. One of its snakes was using its mouth to hold up a feather duster, with actual purple feathers visibly tied to a rough wooden handle, presumably due to a lack of other available appendages.

“Y—yes? Lady Nyx?” Dusa - she was assuming - _squeaked_. There was no real other way to describe her voice, it was almost cartoonishly high and rapid, with an odd tinny distortion in there that made it just the smallest bit inhuman, possibly due to whatever function let her speak without a larynx, or a throat for that matter.

“Prepare us a _small_ meal, to celebrate the newest member of the House,” Nyx instructed, her voice rather more detached and cool than it had been when she was speaking to her. “Is that clear?”

Dusa nodded, or at least seemed to, if the way she was bobbing her head up and down was any indication. “Right!—I’ll, uhm, do that! Right now!”

With another burst of speed, Dusa was off, flying towards the lankier spectre she had seen coming in, brandishing her feather duster.

“It shouldn’t take long,” Nyx mused, still glancing the way Dusa went, her hands folded primly in front of her. “Her enthusiasm can overcome her decorum at times, but she is a dedicated worker.”

Nyx’s eyes turned back to her, entirely too focused—too _aware_ to be comfortable.

“Tell me,” she started, eyes lidding. “What do you know of us?”

That was a tricky question, wasn’t it? She could play dumb, wave off anything but the most rudimentary awareness of the Greco-Roman pantheon, but then most people knew at least a little. She knew a little more than average, due to the lapsing interest she had in them after her middle school curriculum had gone over them. They had seemed like mythological capes in a lot of ways, and she had even considered the flight of fancy that they - and other polytheistic pantheons - might actually be such a thing.

It might help her get information too. Nyx might let something slip about individual powers, as at this point all she knew was that everyone here likely had some sort of altered biology - the bluish skin, floating heads, that sort of thing - and a few had powers they’d actually used.

No, it would be best to let Nyx think she didn’t know much.

“Not a lot,” she said, finally, keeping her gaze steadily interlocked with Nyx’s. “I’ve only really heard your names in passing.”

Nyx pursed her lips, giving her a considering look, before bowing her head. “Then it may be best to inform you of who is who, and what to expect.”

It worked. Good.

“The lord of this domain is Hades himself,” she began, gesturing in an area around her. “Myself and Lord Hades share duties. I handle the managerial side of things, whereas Hades himself manages the bureaucracy and rulership of the domain, in large part because the Olympians would not consider me their equal.”

Possibly another cult, and potentially adversarial? It was starting to worry her about how many there might be.

“Lord Hades is the god of the dead, of the Underworld, and of the mineral riches of the earth,” she continued, hands returning to their place in front of her. “He is the master of the House of Hades, and he is the father of one child—Zagreus. The one who has been trying to escape.”

There was no mention of Persephone. Everyone got taught it in school, Hades spiriting away the goddess of grain to be his wife, with the mother to said goddess refusing to let anything grow until she was returned for 6 months out of the year. It was a way to teach kids how other cultures saw things like weather, seasonal change, and things that we later found out were products of science. Why did lightning happen? Zeus. The seasons? Divine in-laws.

So the cult might be inaccurate, then. Or at least not playing fully to the myths she remembered. That threw a wrench in things, for certain.

“I, personally, am Nyx, as you well know, goddess of the night. I am the mother of a number of children, though you will only truly see two of them around—Thanatos, my son, and god of death, and Hypnos, his brother, god of dreams, who you have already met. A third that you may one day meet is Charon, the boatsman of the Styx. I will not name all of my children, as you are unlikely to meet many, if any of them, but you do remind me of one. Eris, one of my daughters, and the goddess of discord.” Despite the nature of the words, Nyx smiled faintly, almost longingly. “You have a similar air about you.”

Taylor had no idea how to feel about that. It had been said in a way that suggested Nyx believed that it was a compliment to be similar to the goddess of discord, or the person who _set off the Trojan War_. Or at least a person who might approximate such a name, considering that these still weren’t gods. The fact that she had so many kids - one of whom was easily her age, if not older - did set off more alarm bells in her head, not that they weren’t already all mostly ringing in the first place.

The way Nyx kept reinforcing her status as _a new member of the House_ had already put her on edge. Wards of all ages, even ones like herself, got regular classes on how to avoid situations like this, due to the very real incentive by horrible people to ensnare and manipulate young parahumans. Powers were game-changers in a lot of cases, even a very rudimentary Brute could make you nigh-unstoppable without another parahuman to fight him. All of this was made worse by the fact that powers were generational, with kids usually inheriting variations on them.

She definitely couldn’t relax here, not even for a moment.

“Here comes our meal,” Nyx called out, glancing off somewhere behind Taylor’s shoulder. She turned with her, watching as Dusa awkwardly fluttered over, her feather duster abandoned to help free up snakes to carry the load. There were two bowls, encircled by one snake each, two goblets with snakes using their mouths to hold, and one large platter that she had balanced on the crown of her head, with a snake keeping it in place. It was certainly much slower than she had been moving before, though whether that was due to weight or just wanting to be careful wasn’t clear.

Shakily, Dusa eased the goblets out onto the table, each one sloshing with a purple-red liquid. Wine, and potent too, she could smell it even from where it was sitting. She certainly wasn’t about to indulge in that; even if she wasn’t running the risk of poisoning herself, the last thing she would do was consume mind-altering substances in a place like this.

Next came the bowls, one going to each of them again. Inside was a small assortment of fruits: two stalks of purple grapes, a few chunks of pomegranate, and what looked like a small assortment of dried figs. They all looked a little too perfect, like the fruits you saw on television commercials, likely painted over and laced with things like shoe polish to give it the mirror sheen that nature would never meaningfully create. The reds were too red, the purples too purple, and there was not a limp, soggy grape in sight.

She didn’t trust it. Whatsoever.

Finally, the last platter was placed with help from the now freed snakes. On it was some sort of roast fish, not any she’d seen before, though the majority of the outer scales had been peeled away, just leaving the head and tail. It was about as long as her thigh and considerably thicker, and it smelled faintly of smoke.

“You may go, Dusa,” Nyx declared, waving one hand dismissively.

Dusa hovered for a moment, big yellow eyes almost glistening. She looked starved for praise or positive reinforcement, and it might’ve inspired some sense of sympathy if not for the fact that she resembled someone’s decent attempt to make Voldemort look cute by appealing to all the things the human brain associated with young children. Then, without so much as a tear shed, the gorgon head puttered off again, back up into the rafters, to who-knows-where, stopping only to grab her feather duster from a nearby table.

Across from her, Nyx reached for her goblet, pulling it up to her lips and taking a small sip from it. Their eyes met for a time, Nyx raising one brow as she set the cup back down, reaching for her own bowl. “Wine not to your liking?” She asked, plucking a grape from the stem.

“Not a fan of alcohol,” Taylor replied, and that much was at least the truth. She had been drunk exactly once due to some idiot Tinker aerosolizing half of a brewery, and that one experience had been, frankly, more than enough.

“Then what of the food?” Nyx said, pausing briefly to slip a grape into her mouth.

What _about_ it? Taylor glanced down at her bowl again. Pomegranate was the first thing to stand out to her, a brilliant red, contrasted by the white of the rind. They looked perfect, appetizing even if she wasn’t all that hungry, or even particularly thirsty for that matter. The sight of it alone brought the myth of Persephone back into sharp relief; she’d been stuck in the Underworld due to eating pomegranates, just like this.

“I’m not hungry,” she declined, instead, because any chance at all of that being relevant to the food was too much of one. It could be laced with drugs - tinker designed or not - to make the reality they were trying to project appear more real, make it easier for her to swallow.

Nevertheless, this still brought a frown to Nyx’s face. A tight one, the sort of frown that parents wore when their children did something inappropriate. “Do you still think us so despicable as to break the laws of hospitality? To poison your wine, your food?”

The laws of hospitality—it sounded vaguely familiar, but the memories were too murky to get anything out of it. She rolled her jaw, trying not to grit her teeth. “As far as I’m concerned, I’m being held here captive against my will.”

Nyx’s frown deepened. “You are still disoriented, child? Perhaps... no. Hades may be right on matters of the mind this time, however rare such an occurrence is. If I cannot convince you, you must learn to convince yourself.” She shook her head, a tired sigh threading through pursed lips. “You will not starve without food, you will not die of thirst without drink; immortals eat only for the enjoyment of dining. If you do not wish it, you will not need it, but know, despite your own lack of decorum in the ritual for hospitality, I, speaking in place of this House, still extend our protection to you, now and forever.”

A throwaway line about _protecting_ her after all of that? Hardly about to make her feel much better about the situation.

“I ask of you to keep these thoughts to yourself, however,” Nyx said, sparing her another glance, this one pitying in a rather more dismissive way. “While I am able to acknowledge it, others may take your words as an insult. Whether or not you believe any of this is real, it would be to everyone’s benefit not to make enemies by inflaming tempers.”

Taylor regarded Nyx from across the table in silence. She was of two minds on this. On the one hand, Nyx did have a point—brainwashed or otherwise indoctrinated people weren’t likely to take her statements that this was all fabricated and delusional lightly. Some of them might even lash out. On the other hand, however, the explicit request not to do so made her think it might be worthwhile to do it anyway.

But... no. The ship was already sailed for playing along and pretending everything was normal, and escaping some other time. They knew she thought this was all bullshit, it wasn’t a secret she was necessarily hiding. If she did speak about it to others, and it didn’t correct their thinking immediately, the only effect it would have would be to make her escape even more difficult. She was right, there was little point in airing her concerns. She’d find a way to come back and try to figure out how to spring others, but until that point she had to look out for herself.

“Fine,” she replied tightly, folding her arms over her chest. “I’ll keep it to myself.”

Nyx smiled wanly. “Thank you. The House has been a bit of a mess, since Zagreus has begun his escape attempts to the surface. I would prefer it if we didn’t worsen tensions any.” She halted for a moment, head turning back towards the door. “Speaking of his attempts, it would appear he’s made it past Megaera.”

The name was familiar enough to put a title to it. Megaera, one of the furies—a sort of, as far as she could remember, god or spirit of revenge with relation to broken laws and taboos, she was pretty sure. The only ones she could completely remember were related to that one story about a son killing his mother after his mother killed his father because he killed their daughter. Even thinking it was getting it mixed up in her head, but at least she had a rough idea about who was coming.

“How does he keep managing to escape?” She asked, not caring too much about looking like she was fishing for information.

Nyx glanced back. “He has an escape route somewhere in his pavilion, connected to his room,” she explained, head flicking back around towards the door as the sound of heeled footsteps grew ever-closer. “Lord Hades doesn’t fix it, as he believes that, even if all else fails, he can simply stop Zagreus from leaving up at the Temple of Styx.”

She would have to find out where exactly his room was, but it sounded promising.

The footsteps grew louder until, finally, a person emerged from around the corner of the door. She was, as seemingly with most denizens of this place, partially monstrous; with blue-hued skin much like Hypnos and what looked to be a large bat’s wing that extended out from somewhere on her back.

She wore blues and golds, with a style distinct to ancient Greece, if perhaps a little more modern than the long, flowing togas of her peers. It was a half-toga, or something similar to it, aborting around her thighs and overlaying a more modern dark purple shirt that clung to her person. Both of her arms were largely bare, revealing corded muscle, and she was broad-shouldered. Her hair was a white-blue, tucked back into a high and severe ponytail, cinched with a golden tube of some kind. She was, as with most others, adorned with jewelry, from another odd collar-like fixture around her neck, flared and with spikes near her nape, golden wristbands, a belt made of what looked like actual woven gold thread, and golden sabatons that, near her knees, were made to resemble a skull. Fastened to her belt was unmistakably a whip, coiled into a circle.

It might say something about her ability to compartmentalize that none of the monstrous features were the things that startled her. She had grown almost numb after she’d watched a floating head covered in snakes give them their meal plates. No, what startled her was the magenta lipstick and nail polish. It contrasted noticeably against the rest of her, and was in a shade that just wasn’t something you could extract from plants. It had to be artificial, and when until now the most complicated piece of machinery she’d seen were door hinges, that said something.

It felt out of place, it almost made _her_ feel out of place.

Megaera’s face, twisted into a steely rage, flattened the moment she caught sight of Nyx, turning back into a blank and utterly professional facade. Her eyes twitched, the only thing she truly moved, to her, and then back to Nyx. There was a question somewhere in the back of her expression, Taylor could almost see it.

“Lady Nyx,” Megaera said, her voice throaty and a touch subdued. “It’s good to see you enjoying the lounge. May I ask who this is?”

Nyx smiled plainly. “Tell me, Megaera, how is the child doing on his current escape attempt?”

The ghost of a few expressions flickered across Megaera’s face before it all settled back down. “Flagging,” she admitted bluntly, sounding a little satisfied by it. “He took me down, but he was already lagging behind. I doubt he’ll make it very far into Asphodel.”

“I see,” Nyx replied, tone giving nothing away. “As for your question, this is Taylor. A new god, born of the Styx.”

Megaera’s mask buckled enough to show confusion and shock. “Is your mother Styx herself?” she asked, sounding like she would really rather that not be the case.

“No, Hades told me he would’ve known if she was. It would appear this one was simply sired by circumstance, born from power, rather than lineage,” Nyx interjected, passing her gaze back over to Taylor, watching for a reaction. She gave her none, and Nyx, with a look of bemusement, focused back on Megaera. “She is still unsettled by her birth, and is having some difficulties adapting.”

Taylor let her hands clench beneath the table. Megaera shot her a probing look, glancing over her clothing, her hair, her face, before giving a shrug.

“Welcome to the House of Hades,” she announced, instead, resting the knuckles of one hand against her hip. “I hope we can have a productive work relationship.”

Between the colour of her nails and the fact that she’d heard something closely approximating that in her past workplaces, the entire situation was feeling utterly surreal. Megaera was relaxed, but distant, not focusing much, if at all, on her, unlike Nyx’s, whose focus Taylor could only meaningfully avoid a quarter of the time. She looked like something out of a Mortal Kombat game, all bright contrasts and absurd, semi-inspired outfits.

Still, Megaera was clearly waiting for a response, with each second that ticked by drawing her features into an increasingly annoyed look.

Taylor took in a breath, steadied herself and made sure to remember that this was still a cult that had abducted her and was trying to make her believe she was divine in some way. She had to play along, to the best of her abilities. “You as well,” she said at last, about the best thing she could put together.

Megaera relaxed even further, loose shouldered and almost limp. A small smile twitched at the corner of her lips, almost friendly. “I’m glad at least someone is taking their future duties responsibly.”

“My future duties?” Was _this_ the part where they told her how they want her to crank out children to indoctrinate and brainwash?

“She isn’t aware of her domains yet, Megaera,” Nyx chided gently. “We do not know yet where she will go in the systems of the Underworld.”

Megaera blinked, lips tugging down a bit. “Oh, so a bit like Zag,” she said, sounding a bit hesitant. “I mean, I think you’ll find them out eventually—all gods do have domains, it can just take some time for some.”

“Quite,” Nyx agreed with a rather pointed look in Taylor’s direction.

She ignored it.

“If you ever need help, you can come to me to ask about it,” Megaera said, then. “I know this can be overwhelming, but we all prefer to run a tight ship and if you have questions, you can come to me or someone else as necessary. Speaking of, where’s Dusa?”

Nyx glanced upwards. “I believe cleaning the rafters of bats.”

“Again?” Megaera glanced up too, frowning. “We really need to get a cage for them, they keep repopulating. I didn’t even know bats _could_ live this far down in Tartarus. They certainly can’t in most of the Underworld, that much is for certain.”

Following their gazes up, Taylor caught sight of, true to their word, Dusa ‘cleaning the rafters of bats’. Bats about the size of small dogs, one of which she had a snake wrapped around the throat of and was bludgeoning headily with the feathered end of her duster.

Taylor blinked, reached up to try to rub at her eyes. When the black spots faded, she could still see it. The bat went limp after a few more violent cracks between its ears, falling over limp. Almost eerily, the massive bat was slowly dragged back onto the rafters, where it slid out of sight.

“She has gotten good at it,” Megaera mused absently. “I’m glad the training we did worked out for her.”

“Oh? Is that where she got it from?” Nyx replied in turn.

Taylor glanced down, just in time to see Megaera flush a blotchy purple, looking more than a little awkward. “She kept getting bit by the bats, and she asked, so I thought it was okay?”

“It was, Megaera,” Nyx soothed. “Your friendship is a good thing, even if I can be critical about Dusa’s enthusiasm at times.”

This felt absurd. It felt like this should be a sign of the entire charade falling apart, an indication that people were letting down their roles, but it was... consistent. It was absurd, but within the realm of what they were preaching.

She still couldn’t let her guard down, but the entire thing felt utterly disarming. Had it been intentional? She didn’t know, _couldn’t_ know, but wasn’t about to let it be the case. She pushed the train of thought out of her head. This was power-related, all of this was. It had to be tinkertech or something more complex like reality-warping. None of it would make sense otherwise.

Taylor took in a breath, let it out, and felt herself finally settle. Good.

“Ah,” Nyx intoned, glancing back off into the middle distance. “It would seem your prediction was right, Megaera. My charge returns home early. Come, Taylor, you two must be introduced.”

Nyx rose, gracefully pulling away from the table. Her words said they were a request, that she was simply asking Taylor to come along, but her tone—it made it very clear that it was a command. Whatever patience Nyx might have had for her, she was starting to guess she had worn thoroughly down at this point.

Megaera watched the two of them, clearly picking up on some of the subtext but not enough to get a proper read on the conversation.

Taylor, begrudgingly, eased herself to her feet, the stone cold against her toes as she moved her feet away from the places she’d planted them. Nyx prowled along ahead, passing around a larger contingent of spectres, and beholden to her request, Taylor followed after. They passed out through the doors of the lounge, back into the hallway leading up to it. She glimpsed, for a moment, a black stone archway with purple light filtering out through it, but didn’t have enough time to wonder what was over there, having to speed up her walk to catch up behind Nyx.

“Back already, _boy_?” Hades boomed from his desk, the only part of him visible being the crown of his head, encircled by that red-orange laurel wreath. The rest of him was hidden behind stacks of papers.

The spectres, having lined up politely in front of Hades’ desk, parted like a sea as the sound of footsteps - _bare_ footsteps, at that, like her - began to grow louder and ever-closer.

Around the corner, slowly, Zagreus came into sight.

The first thing that struck her was how normal he looked by comparison. His skin was still deathly pale, but a handful of shades darker than Alabaster. He looked in his early 20s at the latest, though had a certain agelessness to him that made her feel like she couldn’t be so sure about that. His features were somewhat boyish, with a defined jaw and a rounded chin. One of his eyes was a red identical to Hades, while the other was green. His hair was a mess, a tangle of black cowlicks and fringes that stood on end, giving it a spiky and untamed look, barely held in place by a red-and-orange laurel wreath, much like his father’s.

He was by far the least bedazzled out of the lot, with no true visible jewelry on him. He did still wear a toga, yes, and of a similar style to Megaera’s, albeit in gray and white, overlaid by a red swathe of cloth that bore a resemblance to a sash. Nearly one half of his torso had been left bare, revealing the upper half of his ribs and chest, as well as shoulder and arm, while the other kept the clothes he was wearing cinched in place by a series of three dog skulls, each one with bony ears as well. His belt was similarly made from bone, carved into skeletal faces, and below that he wore either pants or leggings or something similar, a shade of red identical to the one on his toga. Below that were metal sabatons, with skull-like details, but ones which ended around his ankles, leaving his very-much-smouldering feet bare and exposed for the world, flickering with red-hot embers.

“Well, the lava was just so inviting, you know?” Zagreus called back, coming to a halt a dozen or so feet away from Hades’ desk itself. The cheek just about oozed out of his voice, though something underneath it was still bitter. “One of your skeletal friends gave me a helping hand to realize that.”

“You’ll never escape,” Hades promised darkly, sounding about ready to reach over and smack Zagreus upside the head. “Your continued failures to make it to the exit prove as much.”

Zagreus scowled up at his father, arms crossing over his chest.

“Child,” Nyx called out, the both of them passing out through the threshold of the hallway and into the main circular area. Zagreus turned his head, the scowl bleeding from his face as he caught sight of Nyx, only to be replaced with something like utter confusion when he caught sight of her. “I have someone to introduce you to.”

Hades, behind his desk, made something of a disgruntled noise, but did nothing further to try to interrupt them.

“Did uh, Father recently lift the ban?” Zagreus asked, eyes flicking between herself and Nyx. “Because, well, visitors aren’t exactly _normal_ , you know?”

“Child, please give me a moment to speak,” Nyx chided softly, still sounding amused. “This is Taylor, a goddess born of the Styx. Taylor, this is my charge, Zagreus.”

“That’s a weird name,” Zagreus blurted, barely letting her finish. His features coloured, a true pinkish blush catching around his cheekbones. “Not bad! Just—weird, oh, _shadows_ this is an awful introduction. Can we start over?”

Taylor really didn’t know what to feel with that sort of reception, other than bafflement. “Sure?”

“Right!” He extended one hand, the universal gesture for a shake. She took it. “I’m Zagreus, Prince of the Underworld, it’s good to meet you Taylor. Say, is your mother Styx?”

“Why does everyone keep asking that?” she asked, instead.

Zagreus gave her a blank look. “Zelus, obviously?”

That told her absolutely nothing. “No, she isn’t.”

Zagreus brightened, shaking her hand firmly before letting go. “Sorry about the cold reception, Father is just like that.”

Considering the last time she showed him any amount of disrespect, she pointedly said nothing in response to that, especially when she felt Hades staring at her again.

“Right, well,” Zagreus shuffled to the side, glancing at her awkwardly and towards the archway she’d seen coming out of the lounge. “I need to go give this another attempt, alright? I’ll see you around. Or not.”

“Wait,” Taylor interjected before he could even so much as fully get around her. His head swivelled back to stare at her, almost boggling. “I want to help.”

He gave her another blank look. “You don’t even know why I want to escape, you just arrived here.”

“I don’t want to be here any more than you do,” Taylor deflected, remembering the agreement she had with Nyx. “Your father gave me permission to come along with you, working from the notion that my failure will make me accept my place here.” It was about as close to the truth as she could manage it.

Zagreus glanced over her shoulder, towards Hades, then back to her. “He says the same to me, too. I think he figures I’ll give up if I die frequently enough. Hasn’t happened yet, or will ever. Still, disappointing that he’s already started reusing old lines already.”

If he dies—that, there were revival powers. He might have one of those, and it would fit, being the child of Hades, thematically anyway. “Alright, so. How about it?”

“I mean, I guess?” Zagreus started walking, then, down the hallway, and Taylor trailed after him, glancing back over her shoulder to find Nyx watching her, raising one arm to wave her fingers in her direction. “Sure. If we make it Elysium, it’ll finally be two-on-two, and I might be able to stuff Theseus’ spear somewhere it’ll hurt. I can even get you a weapon, if you need one, anyway?”

“I would prefer one,” Taylor replied diplomatically, glancing into the lounge to find Megaera watching her with narrowed eyes, but with surprisingly little heat. They passed by it, arriving at the archway, which Zagreus rather jauntily walked into. Passing around the wall to it, she got her first sight of what was inside.

In theory, seeing a self-proclaimed god’s bedroom may run the risk of further alienating him, making him feel all the world like Nyx and Hades, impossibly distant and foreign. The reality was, however, that stepping into Zagreus’ room was like stepping into her own room in the past, if significantly larger. Zagreus, clearly, did not put much emphasis on keeping things tidy; his bed was a mess, with sheets pooled around the bottom, the floor was littered with the occasional skull, pot and other fixtures. There were two trunks, both overflowing with clothes, one at the end of the bed and the other next to a desk, where a scroll had at some point toppled off, leaving a length of papyrus behind it like a roll of toilet paper. At the end of the room, opposite his bed, was a vast, inky mirror, reflecting crystal-clear images of the people, if not the surroundings.

It made her uncomfortable to look at, so she avoided doing so as she paced into the room itself.

“This way,” Zagreus called out, glancing behind him. Across the room from the entrance was another archway, leading out into a stone pavilion, with several distant objects seemingly floating in the air. The majority of the room was blocked from her sight by the edge of the archway, so she carried herself forward into a jog, picking up her pace to get back into step with Zagreus, who had already departed into the area proper.

Passing through the threshold, Taylor sent a look around. The floating objects from before were a sword of some kind, a spear, a bow, and what looked to be a pair of gauntlets, currently covered in chains and locks. Next to the cluster of weapons was a display case, fitted with wood and glass, inside of which were a smattering of trinkets or keepsakes, curious objects that didn’t seem terribly interesting to her.

The pavilion proper had a small area of extended stone that pointed out from the square arena-like area. Casting her gaze up and around, catching sight of only the gloom high above - unnatural, she noticed - and rocky cliff walls off into the distance, Taylor let her feet carry her along and up to the end of the perch.

A massive city, vast and almost unending, was what she was met with at the other end. Green light filtered out of a great temple, thousands of buildings were mashed together in a labyrinthine network of alleyways and streets. Motes of light - now what she was noticing as likely spectres - filtered along the main path. She tried to look further, over the horizon, but she saw no end to it.

It was... huge. In ways that things shouldn’t be, had they been power created. There were _limits_ , and in theory, someone could have made an entire underground city like this, inhabited by spectres, powered by tinkertech, but it was larger than anything she had ever seen before, could ever believe would be functionally _possible_ with powers. Her heart fell into her stomach, and she found herself stumbling away from the edge, from the fathomless ravine far, far below.

“Yeah, Tartarus can be intimidating like that,” Zagreus’ voice interjected, sending her heart right up into her throat. She jolted, jostled around in a flinch, towards where the voice came from. He was leaning against the display case, one hand under his chin, a sheepish look on his face. “Sorry, didn’t mean to startle you. It’s always interesting to see how people respond to seeing Tartarus for the first time. Shades can be very expressive.”

Taylor breathed in and out, managing to steady her heart. “Yeah,” she croaked out, brushing a hand over her forehead. “It’s a lot.”

“A lot to escape,” Zagreus agreed solemnly. “It’s totally cool if you don’t wanna come. Like, let it be known, I _really_ understand how daunting all of this can be.”

She shook her head, pushing her doubts to the back of her head. Question later, deal now. She just had to get out, and whatever fucked up shit this world was dealing with, she could handle then, when she was safe. “No, I’m coming along. I won’t be trapped here.”

Zagreus’ expression split into a broader smile, and he clapped his hands together. “Well, alright then! Speaking of. Hey! Skelly!”

There was a noise, like energy charging up before firing. Taylor cant her head to the side, catching sight of an odd sigil inscribing itself across the stonework in the middle of the pavilion. It burst suddenly and without warning, a shower of light that nearly blinded her. She scrambled back, expecting an explosion, but was met, instead, with a skeleton. Something out of an RPG, or a horror movie. For a moment, it just stared back at her, the pits where its eyes should be filled in with some sort of purple energy, likely to approximate eyes.

“Heya boyo, who’s the lady?” The skeleton said in, of all things, a thick Brooklyn accent, _sincerely_ not helping the absurdity of everything beginning to weigh on her.

“That’s Taylor, a new goddess. Born out of the Styx,” Zagreus was quick to introduce, waving a hand in her direction.

“Weird choice in names,” Skelly replied, utterly glib. Taylor could feel her brain beginning to process the accent, but it was certainly taking some time. Felt a lot like she was spinning her wheels, that or having a mental breakdown. She wasn’t so sure yet.

This had to all be a cult, at this point. If it wasn’t, she wasn’t entirely sure she’d remain sane. A skeleton. With a thick _Brooklyn accent_ , as if he’d died in New York and had to be collected after the fact. She could already feel a stress headache coming on, though measurably fainter than the ones she’d gotten during her time in Chicago.

Zagreus nodded. “Right?!” Then, a pause, glancing her way awkwardly. “Er, not bad.”

“Nah, not bad,” Skelly was quick to agree, presumably catching onto the fact that she was still very much in the room. Thanks. “What’s she here for? Seein’ you off?”

“Nope, she’s coming with me. Speaking of, Taylor, come pick a weapon?”

“I’d be careful about that!” Skelly belted out in a rush. “Not, ah, ta’ make this a _thing_ or nothing but, er, new divines, they got wibbly-wobbly powers. Might want to make sure whatever weapon she chooses, well, that y’ain’t gonna need it for a while after. Infernal weapons can be real tetchy!”

Zagreus glanced her way, then towards the weapons. He pursed his lips. “How good are you with a sword?” He asked, after a moment.

Well. “About as good as I can be with what’s on offer.”

Zagreus nodded, then, a resolute sort of nod. “Right, I’ll take the spear, Taylor takes the sword. I’ll show you how to get it working, alright?”

Nodding slowly, and keeping a good berth from the leering skeleton, Taylor trailed after Zagreus, who led her right up to the sword. In its current state, it was a primarily red blade, with the edges a sleek silver. On the red part of the blade, there were runes of some kind inscribed, while about a few inches from the hilt the red was replaced by triangular bands of gray that grew increasingly dark until becoming black. The hilt was a skull, framed by that ever-so-iconic red laurel wreath, meant to form a sort of handguard. Below that, the hilt was relatively short, one-and-a-half-hands, at best.

“Your best bet to get something that works for you is to invoke your own name in front of it,” he explained, gesturing towards it. “I’m not sure what’ll happen, but the form it’s currently in is invoked in my capacity as a god. It works perfectly for me, though I’ve managed to invoke a few others with other weapons.”

Feeling both oddly apprehensive and _profoundly_ absurd, Taylor shuffled in place. She reached out, pausing as her hand neared the handle. “I—I invoke myself?”

Nothing happened.

“Well,” Zagreus started. “Maybe you just need to—”

The weapon exploded in a shower of energy, flickering and spasming, forming almost glitch-like noises. Taylor stumbled back, shielding her eyes for a time, pulling her arm away only when she could no longer hear it making noise. What was left floating was nowhere near as long as the sword that had once been. It was about the length of her forearm now, and still retained its nature as a straight-sword. The blade now started orange near where it met the hilt, forming a gradient that ended with dark purple near the very tip. The hilt itself was a silver crescent moon with a sun contained within it, and the handle that extended down from it was made out of intertwining bands of purple and gold.

Reaching out, she took it into her hand. It felt perfectly balanced, and while it was a bit longer than the usual fare that she got in terms of knives, the size difference wasn’t so dramatic that it felt unwieldy or likely to hurt her. Holding it made her feel stronger, and moving the weapon around caused motes of purple to drift from the tip, forming a trail behind its arc.

“Oh, wow. A xiphos,” Zagreus said, reminding her that he was there. She glanced back his way, curious, and he supplied. “It’s a uh, pretty common secondary weapon for soldiers? Been around for a while, too. The leaf-shape design really helps it be versatile, as it can be used to slice or stab. It was always one of Achilles’ favourites, though he likes the spear more.”

She glanced down at the weapon, unsure about how the legacy of it fit into this. Or what _Achilles_ had to do with anything. Shapeshifting weapons weren’t exactly impossible, but it still felt... different. She shook the thoughts away, and again, went through the mantra: cope later, deal with things now.

“Any idea what it does? Other than look really cool,” Zagreus asked, glancing curiously at it.

“Not a one,” she replied honestly.

“Ah, well, bet we can figure that out when we head down,” he said, shuffling over to the spear and pulling it from where it had been hovering in the air, flipping the thing around in his hand a few times. He was either good at handling the spear or _really_ good at pretending he was, as he handled the weapon with a sort of familiarity even she didn’t have after years of work in the field.

Motioning for her to follow, Zagreus started to make his way towards the other side of the pavilion and, more specifically, the window. Curious, Taylor trailed after him, tucking the weapon down to her side, not exactly sure where to put it, what with the lack of sheathe or convenient retractable blade, and not wanting to test what exactly the weapon did when it hurt someone on herself. She was pretty sure she was managing well enough, but despite everything the weapon still _was_ pretty heavy, and it was a bit annoying to lug around like this.

Coming to a halt next to the window, Taylor peeked a little over the edge, frowning. “Zagreus?”

“Yeah?”

“Where’s the ladder, or the rope?” The drop from here looked to be nearly a hundred feet, if not more. She couldn’t even really see the floor, that ever-pervasive, unnatural gloom muddying her vision.

Zagreus grabbed hold of her arm, hooking one leg up so that his heel rested on the window pane.

Taylor felt her heart rather suddenly plummet into her stomach.

He gave her an odd look, one of those blank ones she was starting to associate with cultural barriers. “Why would I need either of those?” He asked, sounding almost affronted.

Then, before she could so much as get a word in edgewise, he jumped.

 _With her_.

* * *

Taylor didn’t know how long they fell for. It could’ve been seconds, it could’ve been minutes. It probably didn’t matter, either, as for a time she was relatively sure she was going to die. Again.

Then they landed. Or, rather, Zagreus landed, holding her up by her arm, somehow still in its socket despite the sudden 100-to-0. Old instincts died slow, and before she could really think about asking him _are you suicidal?_ she had already driven the heel of her foot into his ribs.

Zagreus dropped her with a yell, and she hit the ground with a rather hard _thud_. He was clutching his side, wincing. “What was that for?!”

“Tell someone before you’re about to jump off like that!” Taylor bellowed back, pointing at him with her sword.

“How else would I have escaped, a _ladder_? I thought you knew!”

“I obviously didn’t! You have to tell people before you do insane things like that—”

_Pop!_

Taylor whipped her head around, Zagreus doing the same. A few paces away, near the start of the hallway to... _wherever_ they were, a bundle of light had erupted into place. It was a bright, nearly neon-green, and came with a distant scent of pine smoke, of gentle moving winds. In the center of the mass of energy was a symbol: a single arrow, pointed up, bisecting a single horizontal line.

“Oh, hey, it’s Artemis,” Zagreus said, apparently recovering from the most grievous injury she had inflicted on him. She shot him a look, not exactly sure what _Artemis_ had to do with anything. He shot a look back, a little grumpy but in a good mood, trodding forward right up to the ball of ominous light. “It’s just a _boon_ , Taylor. It’s not that complicated. Artemis wants to help me escape, so do other gods, and they send down little boons to help me achieve that.”

So—so a Trump power, then? That would make sense. This was totally still explainable—

His hand reached out, brushing over the orb. It shimmered, then burst, green motes exploding into the air before consolidating into a woman. She was androgynous, actually a fair amount like herself build-wise, albeit a fair amount shorter. Her hair was green, and braided back into one single, extremely thick braid that floated out around her. She wore a headpiece of some kind, antlers fixed into a gold circlet, interspersed with silvery-white moons, a moon that was replicated just below her collarbone. Her clothing was some sort of dress - she sincerely needed to learn the names of these things, she’d look it up once she escaped - with fur cuffing it, making it down just below the top of her thigh, while those strappy sandals she’d always seen in roman iconography covered her feet. In one hand, she bore a long, green-blue bow with carved wooden owls, and on her back, a quiver full of arrows.

“Hey Zag, I—” her head snapped around, staring directly at Taylor. “...Did your father happen to make you a sister? Whenever Zeus corners me on Olympus, he always says Nyx is Hades’—”

“I beseech you, Lady Artemis,” Zagreus said with the sort of strained discomfort that can only really come out of conversations like this. “Do _not_ finish that sentence. This is Taylor, a newborn god, and _not my sister._ She’s helping me escape.”

“Well, alright,” she said, glancing away. “You still only get one boon for one of you. Enjoy, or something.” The woman flickered, then pulled apart into three separate motes of light.

“Sorry about Lady Artemis,” Zagreus said, belatedly. “She doesn’t like, well. Gods. In general.”

Taylor had no idea what to say. Or think. She blinked the spots of light out of her eyes, rubbing at the sooty scuff marks around her knees as she pulled herself up into a stand, dragging her sword with her.

Zagreus shot her a wounded look at her silence, but nothing more, poking at each mote of light with a curious look on his face. Finally, he grabbed hold of one in particular, and it soaked into him with a burst of light.

She decided, rather frankly, to simply ignore the inconsistencies at this point. She shovelled them into the back of her brain, made sure not to think too deeply about it, and adopted a policy of assuming Trump powers first, everything else secondarily. Nothing else would make sense at this point. Striding forward, she focused her attention towards the other end of the hallway.

Cope later.

Deal now.

“Not going to ask what I took?” Zagreus queried, sounding a little sad about the fact. She ignored him and any looks he might’ve sent her way.

What was that at the end? She squinted, the yellowish blob becoming more clear. It was... a pile of skulls? With more floating skulls around it. What’s more necromancy at this point? They were really getting into the whole Underworld theme, though, she could give them that much credit.

“Oh, a Skullomat,” Zagreus chimed in, picking up his pace. “Don’t worry about it. They just generate Numbskulls, I’ll get rid of it real quick.”

She turned just as he outpaced her, picking up into a run. “Shouldn’t we—”

The finishing _plan?_ was cut off by Zagreus blurring forward, a shower of orange light flaring around his feet as, in two hops, he closed the distance to the pile of skulls. He thrust his spear out, shredding through the pile, sending fragments flying in every which direction, before ducking forward in another burst of speed to pick off the last remaining two with precise, accurate thrusts of the spear. The door nearest to him made a noise, and the glass orb above it filled in with what looked like an amethyst shaped like a teardrop, slightly insubstantial, like a holographic representation of one.

Jogging up ahead, Taylor glanced his way. “Zagreus?”

“Yeah?”

“What’s that?” She pointed up towards it.

“Oh! Actually, funny story about that,” Zagreus began, Taylor slowing to arrive just behind him. “So, the Underworld is where we keep all the dead and all that, but we kinda need storage space. So, they left up these indicators to show what other than evil, tortured spirits we kept in any one region. Since this is currently in lockdown mode, the glass indicators will break to give pursuers a direct path to us, while also making it impossible for us to backtrack.”

That sounded horrifying. “What if we run into a dead-end?”

Zagreus gave her a genuinely startled look. “I don’t know,” he said, after a moment. “I haven’t run into one yet. Bit weird, considering the layout keeps changing too.”

So a perpetually-changing maze full of potentially deadly dead ends, an inability to backtrack, and purportedly full of the vengeful undead. Alright.

She could do this.

She had to.

* * *

She watched Zagreus from a distance as he leapt forward again, spear blurring up to stab directly into center mass of a floating, witch-like wraith. From his body, green motes coalesced, forming a single arrow that blurred forward, taking her across the head. He’d gotten that ability after a second boon from Artemis, the only two boons they’d stumbled on since they’d started crawling through the Underworld.

She had personally withheld from taking any. Power granters rarely came without side-effects, and if she was going to hold on to the tenuous notion that something this complex could be power-created, she was just going to have to work with what she had.

Another quick stab and the witch blew apart into smoke, a wail following it out.

Golden sigils, inscribed with a sword, began to flicker into place around them again. Two near Zagreus, one near to her. It was larger than the rest, and she could already feel the annoyance coming onto her as the sigil solidified and burst, releasing exactly what she expected: a very, very fat ghost.

Now, it shouldn’t be that surprising to see a fat ghost. People generally didn’t die in their best health, but for whatever reason, the dour-looking, chain-wearing, cow-sized spectre was deeply unsettling and unusual. It reared towards her, arms outstretched, and launched itself like a cannonball right at her.

Ducking to the side, she let it hit the wall instead, which it did with a meaty _smack_ and a pained wail. Twisting back around, she drove her weapon right into its side, splitting phantasmal flesh with a flash of purple. The wounds her weapon generated were purple-tinged, with golden motes flickering out from inside.

The fat ghost reeled towards her, one flabby arm outstretched trying to slam into her. Rather than let it happen, she tugged on the connection and felt herself move, a burst of silvery-gold energy flickering into existence where she once was, reappearing on the side of the ghost’s body where the wound was. Her blade glowed, a dim sort of gold around the edges, and she drove it home into the very same wound, causing it to explode with both force and the smoke of the phantasmal creature dying.

That, as it would turn out, was the weapon’s ability. Zagreus claimed most of the time it could create shockwaves of force, but with her it became a more precision weapon. Any wound she made, she could teleport to, and it would infuse her weapon with more power for the next attack. She didn’t _need_ to hit the same wound, though it seemed to do more damage, or perhaps the damage just got deeper and let her destroy the construct more easily.

From behind, she heard the telltale _pop_ of spectres exploding, and turned just in time to see Zagreus skewer the last one through with a stab. The two doors in the room shuddered, and one of those amethyst teardrops - that Zagreus called ‘motes of darkness’ - appeared suddenly right beside him. She could, even here, feel it calling out to her to take, but ignored the impulse, watching instead as Zagreus pressed a hand against it, absorbing it into himself.

Taylor began heading his way, keeping her eyes peeled towards the doors. The indicators above them flickered, then filled in. One displayed another mote of darkness, and the other displayed a symbol she hadn’t seen before. A boon, probably, a golden shield surrounded by four dots.

“We’re making good time!” Zagreus announced cheerily, picking at the coins on the ground and shoving them by the handful into a pouch he apparently kept on himself for this exact reason. “You’re pretty good at fighting for someone who was born today, though. Did anyone happen to teach you?”

“Sharp end goes in enemy,” she deflected, still staring at the symbol. “It’s not that hard.”

“I mean, that’s... true? I hate that that’s true. I trained a lot to get this good, you know?” He was a really talkative sort of person. Not always a bad thing, she’d worked with people who were significantly more unfiltered - Romp, to name one - but it did make the entire situation still a bit... odd. They were fighting through throngs of the long-dead, dodging suicidal skeleton heads, being attacked at range by witch-like spectres, having to avoid being crushed to death by obese ghosts—it should be more sombre, and every time he opened his mouth it made her feel like this was all a joke, or a game.

Except everything was logically consistent. The absurdity was absurd, yes, and the blase way Zagreus treated death was deeply concerning, but it was consistent, and that bothered her.

But she couldn’t let herself focus on it. Hadn’t, not since he cleared out that pile of heads.

“Oh, hey, that’s Athena’s symbol. Neat.” Zagreus strut right on past her, off towards the door, and dutifully - if only because at this point she was banking on his presence being the reason he never ran into dead ends, rather than it being some intrinsic quality of the place - Taylor followed on after him. They arrived at the door, which despite everything still managed to loom ominously above her, making her feel more than a little unwelcome.

Then again, if what Zagreus said was true, this place _was_ supposed to be Tartarus. You know, the place they stuffed the dismembered parts of the Titans. It probably wasn’t the best place to be in the first place.

Reaching out, Zagreus tapped the door in front of him, causing it to open. They passed through it, right into a room that, with little fanfare, was filled with a sudden green light.

“Aw, balls,” Zagreus groused, two massive sigils in front of them, a small ways away, beginning to collect on the floor. “The bomber twins.”

Taylor sent him a worried look. “The bomber _twins_?”

“Yeah, there are smaller ones out in Asphodel, but uh,” he jerked his head, and Taylor followed it, watching as, with another burst of light, two skeletons appeared before them. They were outfitted with a metal helmet with golden spikes, a massive glowing barrel on their back, and a bomb with a candlewick-like flame in their bony hands. They were both easily twice her size, and they both turned and immediately focused on her.

Taylor felt a chill run down the back of her neck and booked it to the side, running into a full sprint. Smart idea, too, as the place she had been not ten seconds ago was very suddenly filled with explosions. She caught sight of Zagreus swooping around the other side, blade in hand as he leapt forward and caught one of the two on the side of the head with one meaty blow, sending it reeling.

She glanced back just in time to avoid getting a face full of bomb, the watermelon-sized explosive whistling past her head as she ducked low. She strafed away from the bomber, keeping a close eye on him even as Zagreus, in the background, whacked his bomber closer to the other.

The bomber procured another bomb in its hand, and then _jumped_. It was similar to how fast Zagreus could. One moment the bomber was across the room from her, the next she was slamming into his bony arm, stumbling to the side. The bomber raised his bomb up, and with a gleeful, horrifying cackle, brought it down.

She kicked back, trying to get a distance, but only got so far. The explosion rocked her, her vision going black for a second as she was spent sprawling, her head spinning wildly and ears ringing like sirens in her skull. Her entire body lit up in agony, flames singing her toga, her skin. She scrambled back, biting her bottom lip to keep the noise of pain out of her mouth, and not quite managing it when the dust cleared and the bomber, looking utter unscathed, was still standing there, face twisted into the mockery of a grin.

Yet, it didn’t reach for another bomb.

Her back jostled against something hard and spiky. She twisted around, blinking the black spots out of her eyes as the whining in her ear from the blastwave finally started to peter off, replaced by the urgent rattling _hiss_ of the urn she’d just bumped into, which was currently sparkling and glowing with purple energy. The face on it was morose, a steely sort of expression, and it was the last thing she saw before it exploded too.

Agony. Pure, undiluted agony. She felt her body leave the ground, get carried through the air, and then land.

Then, she felt it again. Slow, unavoidable, the taste in the back of her mouth, the grinding of stones and something pulling deep in her gut. Death, she knew this, had felt it when she’d been shot. It was not foreign, but neither was it familiar. She felt it soak into her, felt herself begin to sink through the ground itself, the yawning chasm of void rippling in her chest.

She felt death, and it took her all the same.

* * *

Red.

Death.

Taylor emerged from the pool with a hacking cough, waves of blood - or _whatever it was_ \- sloshing around her as her fingers slipped and pulled her up the final few stairs. On her hands and knees, watching her body drip the red fluid without even a single part of her clothing remaining wet, Taylor could only stare down at her hands, tensing and flexing against the stone floors.

This...

This was real.

Wasn’t it?

Oh god. _This was real_.

* * *

Aspect of **???** \- _Stygian Blade_  
---  
Your **Special** no longer deals damage, and instead teleports you to targets marked by your melee attack. Only one target can be marked at a time. Your attack range is reduced by 60%.  
  
Your next melee attack ignores armor.  
  
_A blade seemingly meant for traversal between boundaries_.  
  
* * *


	3. HOMESTEAD 1.3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Taylor arrives back at the House of Hades.

Learning how to cope - both generally and in-the-moment - had been something of a required skill in her past. As much as using her bugs as a crutch to shield her reactions had been helpful, the years she had spent in the Wards had come with a requisite amount of therapy, and from that she had built methods to handle things. Breaking down had always been the worst conclusion to any given crisis—it was not a privilege she had been allowed, not with the end of the world ticking like a clock in the near future.

It wasn’t a privilege she’d let herself have now, for that matter.

The red pool behind her sloshed as she achingly dragged herself free. She felt the red liquid sluggishly drip into the pool below, leaving no trace of itself on her skin.

This was real.

The thought still didn’t _feel_ particularly convincing, despite everything. It bounced off of what she had come to see as logic, with the statement accompanied by a hundred possible avenues or ways it could all be some grand smoke-and-mirrors display. Tinkertech could do so much with so little explanation for it—powers like Labyrinth, Ziggurat, they could achieve similar things, but never on that scale.

Death should feel like little else but the fragile biological machinery that makes up every person suffering a catastrophic error.

But it had been so much more. She had felt herself sink down into the earth, felt something grab tight around _her_ , around the mass of indistinct feeling that she had become. She had felt herself get dragged along and down, ferried on by currents she could neither see nor completely feel, and then she felt herself return. Alive.

It had been spiritual, utterly incomprehensible, and it was real.

If it wasn’t, then what was the real separation from reality? All of this was _real_ , bitingly so, the sheer size of everything dwarfed what she thought was possible and the experiences she’d just undergone had felt as real as any day back on Earth Bet ever had. If this was all a fabricated illusion, all some sordid, highly-specific Master/Stranger situation, it was already so real that separating it from reality was pointless.

Taylor took in a breath, much shakier than she should’ve allowed. Let it out with almost clenched teeth, air whistling over her bottom lip. Her ears started to ring, a low drone of warning, the onset of something like panic or anxiety. She focused her attention elsewhere, away from her thoughts, opting to instead watch her fingers. She twitched each digit, one-by-one, and felt the fluttering noise that precluded a mental breakdown begin to recede.

It was so much harder without her bugs. They had offered tangible distractions, a thousand tiny things to preoccupy herself with or immerse herself in. Without them she felt more naked than ever, more vulnerable, in less control of herself which, for all intents and purposes, was an utterly _sick_ bit of irony. She had worried so much about her passenger being responsible for her worst habits, and even if she had found some peace with it, the notion had never truly left her mind.

Especially not after what she could remember of the fight against Scion.

But now her passenger was gone. It was a truth she’d probably known since she’d first arrived here—the complete absence of her powers had never been so stark, not under any amount of power nullification. It was gone, and with it a fair portion of the shortcuts to keeping herself calm. She knew the strategies, knew the coping mechanisms, the way to keep the panic from fully taking her, but they were _slow_ , clumsy, instincts she had never bothered to develop.

The keening finally receded, and with it Taylor felt herself regain some sort of balance. A tenuous one, one she didn’t want to risk upsetting, but enough that she felt like she could begin to process. The experiences she went through played out on a reel in her head, the sharp echo of pain, the death, Zagreus himself—would he get on okay, without her there?

Probably. At the same time, it wasn’t like she should be worrying too much about him. She had her own problems to deal with at this point.

What else did she know? Bits and pieces, enough to paint something of a picture. The Greek afterlife was, apparently, real—with gods of the dead around every corner. She had emerged from the Pool of Styx - the one she had just presumably climbed out of right now - and nobody had good enough answers for _why_.

Was she even in her own dimension, anymore? She... doubted it. Or if she was, she was about to like the bulk majority of the gods _significantly_ less than she already did, considering the lack of intervention when the planet was at risk of being destroyed. No, it was probably best to think of this as a clean and thorough break; past logic might only muddy things, make her take on wrong assumptions. Things worked differently here, and she would just have to adapt.

Reaching out with her hand, Taylor scrabbled against the hewn rock wall and valiantly tried to pull herself to her feet. Her knees buckled the second she tried to put any weight on it, accompanied by a flare of disorienting pain that brought her back down to her hands and knees, nearly toppling face-down into the floor before she could slam her hand down beneath her torso. She breathed in again, easing herself over onto her hip and thigh - where the pain was less and she wouldn’t have to be stuck mid-push-up - and reached down for the hem of her toga. It took a few tugs, but she rucked the fabric up to the point where she could stare at her lower legs.

Lurid, violent purple bruises licked and swirled along almost every surface of it. The bruises painted themselves in starbursts, exactly where she had been hit the hardest by the explosions, and despite not being able to, she could guess they reached up to about mid-thigh. Even more bizarre, beneath her gaze, they were fading, purples receding back into just reddish, angry smears, though the skin around her ankles and calves looked like it would take a bit longer to heal.

Regeneration, then. Was it a property of the pool, or just her? She’d have to find out, but later.

She glanced down the hallway, trying to find her bearings. It was quiet, a little too quiet—Hypnos certainly hadn’t been waiting for her upon arrival, and the hallway was absent of even a single shade. At the far end of it, she could see where Hypnos was, and though it was too far out to make out his features, his cowed posture and the fact that Hades was looming over him, something gripped in one hand, made it clear he probably wasn’t in the best place.

Taylor pressed the hem of her toga back down her legs, ignoring the way the fabric now settled overly sensitive against the skin of her legs. She grit her teeth, called on all the stubborn willpower she had, gripped at the wall once again, and forced herself painfully to her feet. It was a struggle to do, with each pound of weight making her knees shake for a few moments before adjusting, but by the time she was upright the heady ache had faded into the back of her head as more of a persistent stinging, like very acute pins and needles.

She reached towards her hip, not thinking too much about it, and her fingers met fabric. It took a few moments, the cogs in her brain clicking and stuttering as it tried to reconcile the lack of baton holster with the fact that she had been very much armed when she’d died, and presumably if her toga of all things had gone with her, so should the weapon, right?

It would seem that she was wrong. Had she dropped it? The explosions had been quick, one-after-the-other, and she couldn’t really recall much of the incident itself. It wouldn’t be too much of a stretch for her to have fumbled it, all things considered, but its absence was both worrying and not helping her feel any less vulnerable. She hadn’t exactly felt _safe_ carrying around that sword, but it had been better than this.

Hopefully Zagreus would pick it up, or that it had just relocated itself somehow. She didn’t want to be the one responsible for losing one of the Prince of the Underworld’s personal items.

Using the wall as a crutch, Taylor started to make her way down the hallway. Each step came easier than the last, with more strength and less weakness, but the first couple of paces were a fight. The closer she got, the more of Hypnos’ demeanour became clear. His face was twisted up in sheer discomfort and mild terror, his lip bitten firmly beneath the top row of his teeth, with both hands white-knuckling the edges of what looked to be a box of scrolls.

“...all of it, _redacted_?!” Hades’ voice finally reached her as something more than angry, unintelligible noise, nearly a roar. “Who—Nyx? But, no, she wouldn’t be so _brazen_. You could find nothing else?!”

Hypnos jolted as Hades’ attention pulled back to him, his head bobbing wildly in a nod. “Yes, Lord Hades, sir! Nothing, it’s all, uhm, redacted! Who brought her into the Underworld, who killed her, time and date of death—lineage, everything!”

Hades’ fist met the surface of his desk with a ringing _bang_ , the noise bouncing around the hall like a thunderclap. “How?! I am the highest authority in this place!”

Taylor’s fingers left the wall, startling her. She’d been caught up enough in the conversation not to notice that she had reached the end of the hallway and was now properly transitioning into the main area itself. Almost as though in response to her passing through such a threshold, Hades’ eyes snapped around to her, gaze just as heavy as it had been the first time.

“You!” he barked, sounding utterly furious. “Come here this instant! Let me show you something!”

Taylor flicked her gaze across the hall. Cerberus was still tucked up beside Hades, utterly disinterested in the racket, Nyx was nowhere to be found, neither was Megaera or Dusa. It was only her, Hades, and Hypnos.

Keeping the trepidation off of her face, she approached, closing the distance between herself and a desk that was easily nearly as tall as she was. She watched Hypnos out of the corner of her eye, the floating god looking nervously between the two of them.

Coming to a stop just before the desk, Taylor stared up at Hades. Wordlessly, he thrust his arm out, a slip of paper held tightly in his hand, wrinkled and deformed from where he had clearly clenched down. Taking it into her own hand, she smoothed her thumb out over the wrinkles and stared down at the text scrawled across it.

It was in Greek, presumably ancient, not that she knew if there were noteworthy typographic changes between the two. Ancient Greek which she could, as far as she could tell, perfectly read as though she was fluent in it.

Which she wasn’t. Or hadn’t been, she supposed, considering she was now.

* * *

**DEATH LOG #1**

_T̶̡̺͂A̴͕͈Ỳ̷̱́L̶͍̈́͗ͅŐ̷̪̯̋R̴̲̓̐ W̵̛̞͎̤̝̣̣̬̱͊̐̋͂̓È̸̡̻̜̤͚̣̮̭͛̐̽͒̈́͗̽̾͘A̷̘̻̖̞̮̥͖̦̝̅͋̈́̈́̊̃V̴̛̬̺̲̊̉̆͜Ȇ̸̫̣R̴̛͓̠̟͈͗͘͜ S̷̳̖̭̹̻͔̝̩̊̄̐̄̇̿̍Ķ̷̲̝͑͗̾̈́I̷͚͕̅̆̀̄͝T̸̛͍̖̫̬̈́̋̃̊̽͐́͜ͅT̸̛͓̫̦̈́̓́Ę̷̣̥̫̣̖̟̊R̷̲̭̖̿͆̃̌͘͠ K̶̖͇̖͔̠̓͛͌̽͌̀̔͊̈́͘H̵̡̡̛̥̻̮͈̙͕̥͙̠̠̼̹͓͒̈́̃͋͊̈́̐͜Ẽ̵̦̭͇̪̯̟̙͕̘̒̎̓̾̑̈́͆̐̈́͘͘͘͠͝͠ͅP̶̨̛͉̯͍̪͈̤̪̤̯͎͎̘̽̊̽̓R̴̢̰̠̩̹͚̯̀̈̈͝I̴̹̘̾ Ȟ̵͉͉E̵̝B̸͇͝Ȩ̶͉̊R̷̦̰̿̊T̷̝̾̎_

**DATE OF DEATH:** [REDACTED]

 **CAUSE OF DEATH:** BRAIN HEMORRHAGE DUE TO FOREIGN OBJECTS PENETRATING THE SKULL.

 **KILLER:** [REDACTED]

 **GUIDE:** [REDACTED]

**DATE OF BIRTH:** [REDACTED]

 **PLACE OF BIRTH:** [REDACTED]

 **LINEAGE:** [REDACTED]

* * *

“Is this supposed to be mine?” she asked, glancing back up towards Hades.

“Do you, perhaps, see any problems with it?” Hades seethed, his eyes focused wholly on Hypnos.

“Everything’s redacted,” she remarked plainly, dragging her eyes back up to where her name should’ve been. Five independent collections of letters and shifting characters that occasionally flickered to form names she had been called by—Taylor, Weaver, then back to Taylor, before jumping to Khepri. It was never consistent, and reminded her of a small swarm of ants in the way the text shifted and churned.

“ _Quite_ ,” Hades spat darkly, eyes finally turning back to her. He held out his hand wordlessly, and she placed the sheet back into it, each meaty digit of his hand clenching down tight enough that, for a time, she thought he might just ball it up and throw it away. “Someone has superseded my authority to conceal your nature from me,” he continued, voice growing darker and darker, more affronted with each new word. “They should have simply declared _war_ on me, if that wanted my attention so much. There are only so many people who could do something like this, and I _will_ find out who did this. If not for the war, I would scour the realm this very instant!”

“The war?” Was she still in her dimension?

Hades’ gaze turned flinty. “A long winter has destabilized the mortal communities on the surface,” he informed her tightly, and something about how he said the word made her think that he was withholding something about it. “They fight wars over dwindling grain and liquid water, and with each day we become more and more inundated with the dead. It’s an unprecedented amount of death, and has left the Underworld... _swamped_ , especially with the inclusion of the foolish boy’s obsession with escaping, taking important resources away from processing fresh souls.”

There was a loud, sharp _clap_ from somewhere behind her.

“You called?” Zagreus yelled, voice carrying. Taylor swivelled to find him jogging up towards them, the red fluid of the pool still dripping from his clothes.

“What are you doing back?” she called out, frowning at him.

Something almost sheepish crossed over his expression, his jog faltering into a more sedate walk. “ _Well_ , when you died, I was worried?” A short, awkward laugh escaped him, mostly under his breath. “It looked really painful, and you took such a long time to fully be taken by the Styx. So I got revenge for you on the bombers and, er...”

“Let yourself die,” Taylor finished for him, her thoughts grinding to a sudden halt.

“Right!” Zagreus said, beaming her a relieved smile.

Why was he like this? He just... got killed, endured all of that pain and misery, just to check up on her? What sort of person just _did_ that? Sure, death might mean very little considering it didn’t seem to particularly stick, but _still_ , he had just... given up on his attempt? Committed assisted suicide with help from the hostile dead?

He was insane. Utterly detached from reality.

But then again, maybe she was too.

“If you’re _done_ ,” Hades grumbled, leaning forward to loom more completely over both herself and Zagreus. “I believe it’s pertinent we discuss what we’ll be doing from here.”

“What’s to discuss, Father?” Zagreus shot back, pulling his arms over his chest as he did, already looking defensive.

Hades _sighed_ , a sort of exasperated noise that seemed to vent a not-insignificant amount of his previous tension. “Between your futile _flailing_ , the war, and other, related problems I’ve been dealing with, it would seem I must conscript help to identify the source of... _Taylor’s_ ”—and he said her name like it was foul on the tongue, spoken with an odd inflection, like he’d never heard it before—“origin. In this case, I am bestowing that duty onto the woman herself.”

Taylor blinked, opening her mouth to interject.

“You may accompany Zagreus on a more permanent basis,” Hades interrupted, eyes narrowing at her. She shut her mouth with a click, keeping her silence. “Hopefully, when he ruins some other _priceless_ fixture, it may give us answers, both to your origin and your nature.”

“That was _once_ , Father,” Zagreus grit out, sounding annoyed. “It was _one_ pot!”

“And what of the countless others you have broken since?” Hades cut in, voice dry and unimpressed.

“Surely you aren’t comparing a pythos made by _Daedalus_ to the darkness-knows-how-many decorative pots you clutter the place up with?” Zagreus retorted glibly.

Hades’ expression curdled into a sneer. “You understand the value of _just one pot_ , then?” he said, and out of the corner of her eye Taylor watched as Zagreus came to realize the corner he had put himself in. “That it was priceless, that _you_ broke it?”

“I was a child!” Zagreus responded, flustered.

“You should have known better!” Hades barked, slamming his fist back down onto the table.

There was no clever retort, no response, just silence. Zagreus stared long and hard at his father, shifting back on his heels after a moment, his breath guttering out of him in a sigh. “Right,” he said, tone callous. “Always should know about things you refuse to teach me. I’m not putting up with this—I think I need to vent some of this by trying to escape again.” He turned his head towards her, staring her dead in the eyes, the easy-going persona he wore like a shield now absent, leaving only someone weary and annoyed. “Want to tag along? Seems like it’s your job now.”

“You’ll have to do this one _alone_ , boy,” Hades growled out, forestalling Zagreus’ argument with a raised hand, palm outward. “The contractors have finished with her room, and she needs to acquaint herself with it. You may drag her along to watch your folly sometime _else_ , when her duties do not conflict with _your_ foolishness.”

Zagreus raised an eyebrow her way, as if questioning if his father was telling the truth.

Taylor just shrugged, not sure of it herself.

“Fine then,” Zagreus huffed, turning around.

“Did you get the sword?” Taylor asked before he could go.

Zagreus glanced back her way. “Well, no. It returns to the, uh, pavilion whenever I die, and I’m assuming the same here? They just find their way back home, and they can’t come with us since there are no weapons allowed in the House. At least not for most people, anyway.” He turned again, glancing down the long, horizontal hallway that connected to the lounge, Zagreus’ room, and at the very end, what looked like a small, untended garden, blockaded by a metal gate. “I’ll see you later, mate!”

Then he was gone, fiery footprints left in his wake.

“I worry about his future,” Hades grunted without much heat.

Taylor bit back on the urge to remind him he certainly wasn’t helping his future prospects, swallowing the words before they could slip free of her tongue. “My room?” she requested instead, swivelling herself around to look at Hades, his oddly-braided beard, the flinty eyes set beneath bushy eyebrows. Even if he wasn’t the size of a giant, he would still be intimidating in a sort of ‘mountain man’ way—roughly-built, with just a little too much mass and untended body hair to be what people thought of as civilized.

“Dusa will guide you to the Eldest Sigil in the Administrative Chamber, which you have now been allowed access to. Do not touch anything there other than the sigil, which has been adjusted to transport you to your new lodgings as requested.” Hades trailed off, glancing towards her, his gaze heavy, but not particularly angry, not as it had been. “Otherwise, obtain a new name for yourself.”

She couldn’t help it. “ _Excuse_ me?”

His stare darkened, features twisting. “I will not tarnish the status of godhood by allowing someone with as barbarous a name as _Taylor_ into our ranks. Find a fitting name, or I will find one for you.”

“It’s my name!”

“It is the name of a dead woman!” Hades snapped, nearly rising from his seat. “You were once a mortal, we have established as much. I know not what you experienced in the world, I do not know what drove you to assume this was all smoke and mirrors, though from the way your own essence has settled, it would seem you have started to accept the _reality_ of your situation. Furthermore, I _do not care_ , you are no longer a mortal, and you will _act_ like it!”

“Lord Hades?” Dusa’s voice was wary, nervous, and located above her and to the right. Taylor glanced up, finding her glimpsing down at them from up high, not quite in the rafters but close enough that she could make a valiant effort to rush towards them if something was thrown at her.

...She would have to apologize to Dusa about how she behaved, wouldn’t she? She’d been... too distracted to consider the lives of other people in this place. If this was a cult, was Dusa a victim or an enabler? She acted in her capacity as a servant, but she hadn’t let herself consider the ramifications of it. She had been dismissive, because it had been easier than considering the lives of those who she thought were brainwashed in the first place.

“Both of you,” Hades began, shifting back into his seat with a throaty huff. “Get out of my sight. Dusa, show _her_ to her room. Otherwise, you know what I _expect_ out of you.”

Dusa fluttered a bit before diving down, coming to a stop just an arm’s length away from her head. Hades had already glanced away from them, treating his dismissal as tantamount, and it probably was. She could still remember the pressure he’d exerted on her, the way it had made her buckle, and the fact that it was an experience she never wanted to endure again.

“Al—alright, uh, Miss Taylor?” Dusa babbled, glancing her way as she started to strafe forwards and towards the hallway opposite to the one leading towards the lounge. “If you could, uhm, follow me?”

If this was her new reality, she was going to have to deal with it. Work with it like she had the Wards, try to make connections. There was no apocalypse that meant she could justify avoiding relationships with, no grand problem she had to direct most of her focus to. This was, as far as she could tell, eternal.

Breathing out through her nose, Taylor started to make her way towards the archway, forcing a tired smile to her face. “Alright, lead the way, Dusa.”

Dusa puttered on ahead, with Taylor keeping close behind her. They left the open area for another hallway, and almost immediately she spotted a blonde man dressed entirely in green, a spear held at one side, standing across the hallway from them. He wore an outer cloak of some kind that covered the majority of his body, but what she could see of it was thoroughly muscled, not quite heavy-set, but muscular to the point where it’s the product of something more serious than a lifestyle choice. It was something he would’ve had to work to obtain, which did raise the question of whether the dead could meaningfully exercise, or if they were just physically static.

It was a small blessing that, one way or another, she had died in peak physical condition.

He smiled politely towards them. “Good evening, Dusa,” he said, voice surprisingly gentle and light, carrying across the distance between them.

“M—mister Achilles!” Dusa flustered, a sheer, blotchy flush crawling over her face, which made up the bulk majority of her. “Good evening!” She fluttered forward, closing some of the distance, and Taylor obligingly followed behind her.

Wait—Achilles? _That_ Achilles? He did look the part, if nothing else, but it still sent her reeling to realize she was looking at the man primarily known for being near-impossible to kill. She had _read_ the Iliad for English during her graduation year, and for the most part it was just that, a _story_. A lot of make-believe, embellishing what was likely an otherwise utterly mundane war.

Yet, here he was. Smiling politely at her. Completely and utterly real.

His eyes flicked to her next, accompanied by a curious tilt of his head. “And is this our newest resident I have heard so much about?”

Dusa’s snakes trembled with excitement. “Yes! Thi—this, this is uhm, Lady Taylor! Our newest goddess!”

Achilles bowed his head in greeting towards her, his smile never flickering. “It’s a pleasure to meet you, Lady Taylor. I am Achilles, I was hired for the purpose of training young Zagreus in the art of warfare.”

“Was the Trojan War real?” She couldn’t help the words, they slipped out before she could properly bite back on them. “The—the mortals, they have a story called the Iliad, which depicts it,” she hastened to clarify, cursing her own sudden problems with impulsive questions. “I’m just, it’s taking a while to accept that this is all real.”

Of all the things Achilles did, he just smiled. A smile filled with empathy and shared experiences, one drawn tight across his face like a bowstring, like it could slip down into a miserable frown at any notice. “As much as I would prefer it not to be, the tragedy of the Trojan War is quite real. Perhaps a touch different than what I remember, but then us mortals tend to let stories... drift, with time.”

“Uhm!” Dusa blurted, voice still squeaky and nervous. She’d have to work on that, hopefully make Dusa not see her as a threat, considering she was going to have to interact with her for the foreseeable future. “Sorry, but uh, we _really_ have to get you to your room! Hades does not like it if we dawdle.”

Achilles acquiesced with a bow of his head. “Until next time, Miss Taylor.”

“You as well, Achilles.” The words felt odd on her tongue, utterly foreign. She felt like she was LARPing or something similar, role-playing along to half-remembered fragmentary mythos of a culture she had no real interest in engaging with. There’d been too many other problems to give Zeus’ fetishistic plights the time of the day, back then.

Glancing away, Taylor finally let herself take stock of the hallway proper. At one end was a series of pedestals holding up a mix of ornamental objects with a large set of doors behind them, inscribed with details Taylor couldn’t make out at the distance she was at. At the other, the hallway ended in a balcony, with a railing that overlooked the red rivers that coursed through the area. Nestled into the stone wall not too far from said balcony was a door, with a stone mural - with accompanying skull - framed above it.

Dusa picked up the pace again, floating away, with Taylor following sedately behind her. In places, presumably to hide the stony, cave-like walls that encircled the area, someone had hung huge draperies, gray in colour, with tassels shaped like what one might think of when the word ‘bone’ was uttered in their presence. It looked as absurd as the rest of the decor, but then by that very fact it made it almost seem normal.

They arrived at the door within a few seconds, Dusa swinging down to tuck one snake around the knob and tug the thing open after a few aborted attempts. She glanced back towards Taylor, smiling nervously at her, before pressing her face against the door and easing it open, the entire thing giving a low, miserable _creak_ as it did.

Her first glimpse into the Administrative Chamber painted a stark picture. Mountainous piles of scrolls, some tucked away in shelves, others seemingly just stacked on top of each other, framed the majority of the square room. Interspersed throughout were desks, tucked behind which were shades who didn’t even pause to glance up at them. There were a pair of almost comically modern filing cabinets off to one side, with what looked to be a genuine _water fountain_ , fitted with the red water and everything, shoved off into the corner between the wall and the cabinet. At the far back of the room was a raised platform, no taller than a single step, with a circular portion in the center and a variety of candles strewn almost haphazardly around it.

Passing in through the threshold after Dusa shot her another look, Taylor gently eased the door shut behind her, listening for it clicking back into place. The dull murmur of the chambers outside faded in an instant, replaced instead by a distant sound of scribbling quills and quiet humming. Dusa went on ahead, floating towards the candle-strewn platform, and Taylor found herself following with nothing else to do, peeking at the various papers strewn over the rows upon rows of desks. Most of them seemed to be similar ‘death reports’ to the one they had on her, though all of these were filled in much more thoroughly, and without any redacted parts.

Turning her head away, Taylor eased herself up the step and onto the raised platform, approaching the circular portion wordlessly.

“So, uhm,” Dusa began, twitching. “For those of us who can’t phase, like, well, Lady Nyx and Lord Thanatos, we have to use Eldest Sigils to get around to different parts of the Underworld! To use it, you just have to stand on it and sort of... really think very hard about where you want to go? Like, think ‘I want to go to my room’! Okay?”

Dusa’s full attention turned onto her. Big, doe-eyed, and utterly polite.

“Yeah,” Taylor managed to get out, fumbling with the word. She stared warily at the circle before easing one foot onto it, then the other. Dusa stared at her, full of apprehension, and Taylor ran the words she said back over in her head. She shut her eyes, and tried _very hard_ to think about wanting to be in her room, despite not knowing what it looked like nor particularly actually wanting to go there. She wasn’t exactly sure where she _did_ want to go, but at this point it was ‘anywhere but here’.

When she opened her eyes, the Administrative Chamber was gone, and in its place what looked like a storage room. The room was oddly curved, shaped like half of a larger loop, with black stone walls and floors. Most of its size came from its length, easily as long as the hallway between the red pool and Hades' desk, and it had already been somewhat outfitted. There were a few shelves, four or five cubbies tall, a rickety-looking wooden chair with a throw pillow for a seat, a bed tucked away at the far end, and a rug that had clearly been haphazardly strewn out across the floor, bunched up on one side due to it not quite fitting. Some of the shelves had things in them, a half-dozen errant books and baubles, and there were a conspicuous amount of pots cluttered next to them. The area was mostly lit by orange-burning candles, which had been more or less placed _where-ever_ , and showed no sign of actually melting.

A closer glance revealed more as well. Next to her bed was a cauldron of some kind, swirling with an indistinct purple liquid, and there was a sole window, so caked with dust she nearly hadn’t noticed it, directly above the headboard of her bed. Her bed itself wasn’t as large as Zagreus’, but was certainly larger than a single, looking over-stuffed with the small hill of comforters and pillows that had been left on it. The light from the window was a sickly green, but it barely penetrated the layer of dust.

Easing herself forward - and glancing back just in time to see a similar sort of raised, circular platform that had been on top of the platform in the Administrative Chamber flicker and dull, reddish energy sluggishly bleeding out of it - Taylor squished up against one wall to avoid the four shelves right next to the entrance to her room, passed over the wrinkly, out-of-place wine-red rug and chair combo, and came to a stop next to her bed. There was another door that she hadn’t been able to see from the entrance to her room, tucked into a corner, and when she wandered over to open it, it led rather directly into a small, box-shaped room with a hole in the middle, half-filled with water, a gaudy bronze faucet - skull-shaped, of course - right above it. There was also a toilet off to the side, which raised several questions about her digestional tract that she wasn’t very interested in answering as of this current time.

She shut the door to the bathroom with little fanfare.

Pacing over to the bed, she leaned up, pried her fingers beneath the lip of the window, and managed to find the latch. Pushing it aside, the hinges on the window screamed miserably as she shoved it open, managing to haul herself up by using the bed as a sort of stepping stool.

Tartarus laid sprawled out far, far beneath her. The window looked out of the side of a vast tower, so high the mess of temples and buildings below looked distant and utterly tiny. Green motes of light flickered up from below, and she let her eyes drift up, towards the rocky roof of Tartarus not ten or so feet away from her current position.

Oh.

Now she understood why he wanted her to go to her room.

He was making a point. She blinked, glanced down one last time before pushing away from the sill, collapsing bodily onto her bed, which squeaked from the impact, sending a small plume of dust out from beneath the mattress and onto the floor.

She stared up at the ceiling for a moment, mind blank.

What was she even going to do?

Again, as though summoned by the mere thought, there was a low, shuddering rattle of bones. Twisting around to look in the direction of the sound, Taylor watched a skeletal hand emerge from the cauldron next to the foot of her bed, a piece of paper clutched between its index finger and thumb.

What.

It took another few seconds for the sight to properly process, but when it did she buried the sense of absurdity beneath pragmatism and shuffled forward, across the slightly dusty confines of her bedspread, and reached out to take it. The skeleton let go of the note willingly, dropping back down into the purple fluid below in an instant, leaving barely a ripple.

* * *

_Dear Taylor,_

_I know you still struggle with adapting to your environment, so I went ahead and asked my child, Charon, to get you a welcome gift. The Well of Charon that you received this letter through is merely the first part of this gift, but the second part will require some money. You will find a small bag of coins on one of the shelves, and you will simply need to drop one of them into the well, at which point the gift I asked of him to acquire for you will be given._

_Sincerest regards,_

_Nyx._

* * *

...Okay. She could do that. Shuffling off of the bed, she glanced towards the shelves, wandering over. There were a few bags, though all she had to do was pat them down to check what was inside. One felt like it had round, soft orbs in it, another felt full of sand, but the third ended up being the bag of coins, clinking merrily as she lifted it from its place. Brushing the dust from the russet cloth, she loosened the loop of golden cord and opened the top, revealing several dozen golden coins within, inscribed neatly with Hades’ symbol. She fished one out, fastened the top, and placed the bag back down where she’d found it.

Wandering over to the cauldron, Taylor stared down at it. The purple fluid inside seemed mostly content to swirl ominously around in circles, not strong enough to be particularly blatant, but enough that it felt vaguely _alive_ and unsettling. Wordlessly, she flipped her hand around and dropped the coin into it, a ripple of liquid passing over the surface as it fell into its depths.

A short moment later, the skeletal hand emerged, with a glass bottle grasped firmly in its fist, another note folded and tied to its stem. Her reflection stared back at her from it, slightly distorted by the sunny, orange fluid within, but that—it couldn’t be her reflection. Surely not.

She didn’t remember having purple eyes.

It took a lot not to flinch away from it, to banish the unsettled feeling gathering in her stomach and just swipe the bottle haphazardly from the outstretched skeletal hand, which obligingly vanished back into the fluid. It could’ve been a trick of the light, but each time she caught herself looking at her reflection, the purple eyes remained, however distorted her features became in the glossy surface of the bottle.

Carefully untying the small length of thread from the paper note, Taylor unfolded it.

* * *

_Taylor,_

_This is nectar, the food of the gods. It is rather popular among the Underworld, a delicacy, especially when things such as ambrosia are nearly impossible to find. I personally do not have much of a taste for it, though I believe my children don’t share my opinion on the matter._

_I know you avoid our food and our drink, and I do not begrudge you necessarily. But I do hope you enjoy this vintage, if nothing else._

_Nyx._

* * *

She reread the letter a few more times, not finding the answers to her questions in it, but still feeling oddly... happy, about receiving it. Her attention kept slipping, though, kept being dragged back to the bottle, to her reflection, to the purple eyes that stared back at her.

She dropped the nectar and letter on the bed and turned towards the bathroom. She hadn’t seen a mirror in there, but then she hadn’t really checked much beyond what she could see through the door. It wouldn’t be outlandish to keep one in there, and regardless of how spotty candlelight could be, it at least wouldn’t be orange-tinged.

Striding over to the door, she pulled it open and stepped through, turning around the corner and, lo and behold, finding a mirror. It was one of those old-time silver mirrors, mounted on the wall with big, fat iron screws set into stone. The reflection looked much clearer than it had in the bottle.

Then, so did the purple eyes, too. Her eyes were _purple_ , an identical purple to the motes of darkness she’d seen Zagreus picking up, a sort of dark-ish amethyst. She crept closer, one hand reaching out to touch gently against the silvery surface while the other reached up to pull at her lower lid, revealing the red of her socket.

She blinked a few times.

The purple eyes remained.

What the fuck.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So uh, this is a thing. Probably shouldn't've written this the literal day before I have Administrative Mishap writing obligations, but then I clearly have next to no impulse control.
> 
> Anyway, I hope you enjoyed.

**Author's Note:**

> So! I know I said I'd be doing the Enderman snip next, and I... I will try to. But I'll be honest, this idea has been swimming around in my brainpan for frankly too long and my ADHD rules my ability to do things.
> 
> Sorry. But I've been playing a lot of Hades and this idea just would. Not. Go. Away. So I made it, and a ton of other chapters (not written, just planned) for it. Because I have 0 impulse control.
> 
> Other titles I considered: An Idiot's Guide to Godhood, The Underworld 101: So You've Died and Become a God, Death is Merely a Setback, and a few others.


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